
Qass_kH33_23 
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THE 



LIFE AND TIMES 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 




• BY JOHN FOKSTER. 



FOURTH EDITION.. 

WITH FORTY WOODCUTS, AFTER DESIGNS BY C. STANFIELD, R.A., D. MACLISE, R.A. ; 
JOHN LEECH, RICHARD DOYLE, AND ROBERT JAMES HAMERTON. 



LONDON : 
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193 PICCADILLY/ 

1863. 



i 



71? 3^ 3 



By transfer 

SEP 20 19U 



london: PKINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD street. 



1*! 



CHARLES DICKENS. 



GENIUS AND ITS REWARDS ARE BRIEFLY TOLD : 
A LIBERAL NATURE AND A NIGGARD DOOM, 
A DIFFICULT JOURNEY TO A SPLENDID TOMB. 

NEW-WRIT, NOR LIGHTLY WEIGHED, THAT STORY OLD 

IN GENTLE GOLDSMITH'S LIFE I HERE UNFOLD : 

THRO' OTHER THAN LONE WILD OR DESERT-GLOOM, 
IN ITS MERE JOY AND PAIN, ITS BLIGHT AND BLOOM, 

ADVENTUROUS.* COME WITH ME AND BEHOLD, 

FRIEND WITH HEART AS GENTLE FOR DISTRESS, 
AS RESOLUTE WITH WISE TRUE THOUGHTS TO BIND 
THE HAPPIEST TO THE UNHAPPIEST OF OUR KIND, 

THAT THERE IS FIERCER CROWDED MISERY 

IN GARRET-TOIL AND LONDON LONELINESS 

THAN IN CRUEL ISLANDS 'MID THE FAR-OFF SEA. 

JOHN FORSTER. 

March, 1848. 

* The original title of this Biography was the Life and Adventures of Oliver 
Goldsmith. Why it was altered I have explained at the close of the Preface to 
the Second Edition. 



PEEFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION. 



In a few words prefixed to the Third Edition of this Work, 
issued in the same form as the present, I stated that it was 
not meant to displace its immediate predecessor, in two 
octavo volumes, of which it was an abridgment ; but that the 
favour extended to the book had suggested its publication at 
a price that might bring it within reach of a larger number of 
readers, and qualify it to accompany the many popular col- 
lections of those delightful writings to which its principal 
attraction is due. 

The chief omission in the volume is of matter not imme- 
diately relating to Goldsmith himself, and of that large body 
of illustrative notes and authorities which may be referred to 
in the library edition ; but in the preface referring exclusively 
to the latter, and now reprinted because of certain charges 
brought against the writer, will be found a sufficient indica- 
tion of the leading sources from which the facts of the 
biography were drawn. Mr. Carlyle having always blamed 
me for suppressing the woodcuts given originally, they are 
here restored. 

The library edition of this book having been for some 
years out of print, I take the opportunity of stating that a 
new impression of it will very shortly be published with 
additional illustrative matter. 

J. F. 

46 Montagu Square, 
December, 1862. 



r 



PKEEACE TO THE SECOND EDITION, 

(in two volumes). 

Whatever the work may be which a man undertakes to do, 
it is desirable that he should do it as completely as he can ; 
and this is my reason for having endeavoured, amid employ- 
ments that seemed scarcely compatible with such additional 
labour, to render this book more worthy of the favour with 
which the Eirst Edition was received. 

With this remark these volumes should have been dis- 
missed, to find what acceptance and appreciation the new facts 
and illustrations they contain may justly win for them, but for 
the circumstance of an attack made upon the writer by the 
author of a former life of G-oldsmith, on grounds as unjustifi- 
able and in terms as insolent as may be found in even the 
history of literature.* 

Briefly, Mr. Prior's charge against me was this. That I had 
taken all the facts relating to G-oldsmith contained in the pre- 
sent biography from the book written by himself; that the 
whole of the original matter connected with the poet supplied 
in my work might have been comprised in two pages ; and that 
the additional seven hundred pages, in so far as they related 
circumstances in G-oldsmith' s life, and were not mere criticism, 

* The letters in which this charge was brought and answered, are printed in 
the Athenaeum of the 10th June 1848, and in the Literary Gazette of the 29th 
July 1848. 

a 3 



x PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

or reflection, or anecdotes of other persons, or illustrations of 
the time, were a wholesale abstraction from the Life by 
Mr. Prior. My answer (to describe it as briefly) was, that 
the charge so brought against me was in all its particulars un- 
founded and false ; that I had mentioned Mr. Prior's name in 
connection with everything of which he could in any sense be 
regarded as the discoverer ; that so far from my book being 
slavishly copied from his, I had largely supplied his deficiencies, 
and silently corrected his errors ; and that, in availing myself 
with scrupulous acknowledgment of the facts first put forth by 
him, as well as of the far more important facts related in other 
books without which he never could have written his, I had con- 
tributed to them many new anecdotes and some original letters, 
had subjected them to an entirely new examination and arrange- 
ment, and had done my best to transform an indiscriminate and 
dead collection of details about a man, into a living picture of 
the man himself surrounded by the life of his time. 

The reader wiL. observe that the accusation which thus un- 
expectedly placed me on my defence, implied neither more nor 
less on the part of the person who made it, than a claim to 
absolute property in certain facts. It was not pretended that 
my book contained a line of Mr. Prior's writing. Kot even the 
monomania which suggested so extraordinary a charge could 
extend it into an imputation that a single word of original 
comment or criticism, literary or personal, had been appro- 
priated by me ; or that I had adopted a thought, an expression, 
a view of character, a construction of any particular circum- 
stances, or a decision on any doubtful point, which Mr. Prior 
had before suggested or made. The specific and sole offence 
was the use in my narrative of matter which a previous 
biographer had used, which he assumed to have discovered, 
and the repetition of which he would prohibit to all who 
came after him. The question broadly raised was, whether 
any man who may have published a biography, contributing 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xi 

to it certain facts as the result of his own research, can 
from that instant lay claim to the entire beneficial interest 
in those facts, nay, can appropriate to himself the subject of 
the biography, and warn off every other person as a trespasser 
from the ground so seized. 

Now, upon the reason or common sense of such a proposition, 
I should be ashamed to waste a word. Taking for granted the 
claim of discovery to the full extent asserted, the claim to any 
exclusive use of such discovery is sheer folly. No man can 
hold a patent in biography or in history except by a mastery 
of execution unapproached by competitors. He only may 
hope to have possessed himself of a subject, who has exhausted 
it ; or to have established his originality in dealing with facts, 
who has so happily disposed and applied them as to preclude 
the chances of more successful treatment by any subsequent 
writer. But between me and my accuser in this particular 
case, a really practical question was raised under cover of the 
extravagant and impossible one. The substance of Mr. Prior's 
pretensions as a discoverer in connection with Goldsmith came 
in issue ; and the answer could only be, that these had been 
enormously exaggerated. It became necessary to point out that 
to even a small fraction of the matter assumed to have been 
first set forth by him, his title as its discoverer could as little 
be proved, as his right to any exclusive property or ownership 
in it. I found myself obliged to assert, that the most impor- 
tant particulars of Goldsmith's life, except as to bibliography, 
where the books themselves furnished easy hints for the supply 
of every defect, had been published long before by Cooke, 
Glover, Percy, Davies, Hawkins, Boswell, and their contem- 
poraries or commentators ; and that were each fact again 
expressly assigned to its original authority, what Mr. Prior 
might claim for his would be found ridiculously small com- 
pared with the bulk of his volumes. 

In support of that assertion I now place before the public 



xii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

the present book. Not only are very numerous corrections to 
every former publication on the subject here made, and a great 
many new facts brought forward, but each fact, whether new 
or old, is given from its first authority, and no quotation has 
been made at second hand. 

The gravest defect in my first edition is thus remedied. 1 
no longer, from a strained sense of the courtesy due to a living 
writer, and an immediate predecessor on this ground, confine 
my acknowledgments chiefly to him. The reader is enabled to 
see exactly the extent of my obligations to Mr. Prior, and also, 
for the first time, the extent of his obligations to books which 
he has largely copied, and never remembered or cared to name. 
For, nothing is so noteworthy in this stickler for a property in 
facts originally derived, as the perpetual false assumption of an 
original air, by quoting as from the communication of indivi- 
duals, information derived from printed sources. His foot- 
prints were in each case so carefully obliterated, that he 
doubtless thought it perfectly safe to do this, and relied on all 
trace being lost of his having simply been where others had 
been before him. No one reading his book would expect to 
find already printed in a magazine of the last century not a few 
of its most characteristic " original " anecdotes. To the highly 
curious and valuable series of published recollections of Gold- 
smith, written by one of his intimate companions, William 
Cooke of the Temple, before even Percy's edition of the Mis- 
cellaneous Works, Mr. Prior never once refers. He preserves 
almost as close a silence in respect to the Percy Memoir itself, 
which, though remaining still by far the fullest and most au- 
thentic repository of "original" information about Goldsmith, 
he sedulously avoids to name in connection with any of the in- 
teresting matter he abstracts unscrupulously from it. When, 
in the course of repelling his attack, I had occasion to repeat 
my obligations to what I regard as the most valuable details 
in his book, namely, Goldsmith's accounts and agreements 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xiii 

with his publisher Newbery, and the bills of his landlady 
Mrs. Fleming, it never occurred to me to doubt that those 
papers were Mr. Prior's, and remained in his possession. The 
truth, however, is that they were placed at his disposal by 
Mr. Murray, of Albemarle-street, whose son and successor has 
most kindly placed them at mine ; and though I have quoted 
them throughout my volumes as originally published by 
Mr. Prior, it will be found that I have corrected several 
mistakes in his transcription of them, and printed some part 
of their contents for the first time. Even to the entertaining 
tailor's bills which in his book first illustrated Groldsmith's 
boyish love of dress, I have been enabled to add some 
curious details derived from a discovery of yet earlier date, 
connecting with his very outset in life as a medical student 
his indulgence in those innocent foibles. 

The reader will do me the justice to remember that any 
apparent depreciation of the labours of a predecessor in the 
same field with myself has been forced upon me. I had no 
thought towards this gentleman but of gratitude in connection 
with the pursuit which had occupied us in common, until he 
repelled the expression of that feeling. Of course I did not 
think his book a good one, or I would not have written mine ; 
but I liked his liking for the subject, had profited not a little 
by his exertions in connection with it, valued the new facts he 
had contributed to its illustration, and was content, without 
the mention of any adverse opinion as to the mode in which 
he had used those materials, to let the reader silently infer the 
reason which had induced my own attempt. For why should 
I now conceal that the very extent of my sympathy with the 
purpose of his biography had unhappily convinced me of its 
utter failure in his hands : and that for this reason, with no 
dislike of him, but much love for Goldsmith, the present 
biography was undertaken ? It seemed no unworthy task to 
rescue one of the most fascinating writers in the language 



xiv PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

from one of its dullest books, from a posthumous admiration 
more harassing than any spite that vexed poor G-oldsmith 
while he lived, from a clumsy and incessant exaltation far 
worse than Hawkins's absurd contempt or the amusing slights 
of Boswell. In the course of this attempt it became necessary 
to correct many errors, to supply many omissions, and to 
restore point to many anecdotes mistold or misunderstood; 
but while all this was done silently, Mr. Prior's name was 
introduced into the text of my narrative not less than fifteen 
times, and a brief advertisement at its close was devoted to 
the eulogistic statement (for which I can" only now implore 
the pardon of my readers) that the " diligent labour, enthu- 
" siasm, and ability displayed in his edition and elaborate 
" memoir twelve years ago, had placed every subsequent writer 
" under weighty obligations to him." 

If any one then had warned me of the impending wrath of 
Mr. Prior, it would have appeared to me simply ridiculous. 
"With some reason, perhaps, any new biographer may demand 
a brief interval for public judgment before a successor shall 
occupy his ground, but even this in courtesy only; and it 
never occurred to me to question Mr. Washington Irving' s 
perfect right to avail himself to the uttermost of the present 
work, though he did so within as many weeks as I had waited 
years before encroaching on Mr. Prior's. But if any one had 
gravely assured me that the author of a book published twelve 
years, and which, with no encouragement for a second edition, 
had for more than half that time been transferred to the shelves 
of the cheap bookstalls, would think himself entitled coarsely 
to assail me for opening his subject anew, I should have 
laughed at a suggestion so incredible ; and if, in support of 
the statement, details of the proposed attack had been given as 
based chiefly on the imputation of borrowing without acknow- 
ledgment, I should have convinced my informant, by the 
series of examples I am now about to submit to the reader, 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xv 

how monstrous and impossible it was that of all men on earth 
Mr. Prior should ever venture on such a charge, or throw 
down such a challenge. 



At page 13 of Mr. Prior's first volume, in giving several 
details of the childhood of the poet, he expresses his thanks to 
" the Eev. Dr. Strean, of Athlone, to whom I feel obliged for 
" the inquiries he has made," So at pages 22, 23, 110, and in 
other places (in the second volume, 255, &c). Yet the obliga- 
tion was really incurred, not to Dr. Strean, but to an Essay only 
once very slightly and cursorily alluded to (102), containing 
(139 — 149) the whole of Dr. Strean' s information, and published 
in 1808 by Mr. Mangin, who not without reason complained, 
on the appearance of Mr. Prior's book, that, though Dr. Strean 
had placed it in Mr. Prior's hands telling him it contained all 
he had to say about Goldsmith, he had "employed much of 
" what he found in the Essay without having the courtesy to 
" use marks of quotation." (Parlour Window Booh, 4-5.) 

At pp. 28-29, 45-47, 109, 118, 128, and in other parts of the 
description of Goldsmith's boyhood, all the characteristic anec- 
dotes are given generally as on the authority of his sisters or 
friends ; but any particular mention of the Percy Memoir, in 
which (5-6-7-9-13-14) they were first published, is studiously 
avoided. In like manner the account of his first adventures 
in Edinburgh, told with an original air at p. 134-135, the 
notice of Mr. Contarine at p. 50-51, and of Mr. Lawder at p. 
130, are taken without acknowledgment from the same source 
(19-20, 17, and 18) ; and at p. 47 a little fact is described 
as from the communication of a reverend gentleman, who had 
already communicated it to all the world at a public, meeting 
fifteen years before (Gent. Mag. xc. 620). 

At p. 76, coupled with a previous intimation at p. 63, the 
reader is left to infer that Dr. Wilson's account of the college 



xvi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

riot in which Goldsmith took part is laid before him from 
unpublished letters, whereas all the facts, on the special autho- 
rity of Dr. Wilson, are stated in the Percy Memoir (16-17), 
to which no allusion is made ; and in like manner the charac- 
teristic expression in that memoir, that " one of his contempo- 
" raries describes him as perpetually lounging about the college 
"gate" (15), is appropriated as a piece of original information 
at p. 92, and assigned to Dr. Wolfen. 

At p. 98 much is made of the loss of the formal registry 
proving Goldsmith to have taken his bachelor's degree (all 
which is in the Percy Memoir, 17, though Mr. Prior does not 
tell his readers so), and a self-glorifying announcement is made 
of the satisfactory settlement of that interesting question, even 
in the absence of so important a piece of proof, by the fact that 
" his name was first found by the present writer in the list of 
" such as had right of access to the college library, to which by 
"the rules graduates only are admissible." Yet Mr. Prior had 
before him Mr. Shaw Mason's Statistical Account or Survey, 
published nearly twenty years before, where, for satisfactory 
evidence that Goldsmith had taken his bachelor's degree, 
Mr. Mason expressly describes his name as "in the roll of 
" those qualified for admission to the college library" (iii. 358). 

At pp. 159-164, one of the best of all Goldsmith's letters is 
printed without the slightest hint that it had been printed in 
the Percy Memoir (27-32) ; and the same silence is preserved 
(138) in regard to a letter printed, though with less satisfactory 
completeness, at pp. 22-26 of the same most authentic narra- 
tive. Let me add, that though Dr. Percy omits some valuable 
points in this letter, Mr. Prior is not entitled to say that all 
copies of it hitherto printed have been taken from " imperfect 
"transcripts," saving only that which "has been submitted 
"to the present writer," &c, &c. In the 25th volume of the 
European Magazine (332-333) there is a copy, postscript and 
all, word for word the same as Mr. Prior's, except that the 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xvii 

close is more characteristic than his, of the writer's spirit in 
those boyish days. 

At p. 169-170 there is much parade about certain discoveries 
in connection with Dr. Ellis, and we are told that "from 
I accounts given by this gentleman in conversation in various 
"societies in Dublin, it appears that, &c.;" but what appears 
is literally no more than had been told far more character- 
istically at p. 33-34 of the Percy Memoir, to which no allusion 
is made, either here or a few pages on (174), when one of the 
prettiest of all the stories of Groldsmith's improvidence is given 
on Dr. Ellis's authority, without a hint of the book {Percy 
Memoir, 33-34) in which it first appeared. 

At p. 176, the same sort of parade is made about a lost letter 
of Groldsmith's descriptive of his travels " communicated to the 
"writer by &c. &c. &c. to whose father &c. &c." — the fact of 
the letter, as well as of the accident that destroyed it, having 
been published nearly half a century before by Dr. Campbell, 
in his Survey of the South of Ireland (286-289), and referred to 
not only at p. 37 of the Percy Memoir, but in a previous 
biographical sketch by Isaac Eeed (xi-xii.) . 

At p. 209 an interesting notice of Groldsmith's obscurest 
days in London is set forth as " in the words put into his 
"mouth by a gentleman who knew him for several years," 
and the gentleman is elaborately described in a note as a 
"barrister and author of &c. &c. ; " but the circumstance is 
carefully suppressed that " the words " are really quoted from 
a narrative printed nearly fifty years before in the European 
Magazine (xxiv. 91). In like manner, at p. 212-213, by far the 
most valuable and curious anecdote of those dark days, is 
reprinted verbatim from p. 39-40 of the Percy Memoir, without 
the most distant allusion to its having already appeared there. 

At p. 217-218 mention is made' of one of Miss Milner's 
recollections of Groldsmith while an usher with her father, 
but no one could infer that this had been already quoted by 



xviii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

Mr. Mitford from Watkins's Literary Anecdotes (515), though 
certainly it was more pardonable in Mr. Prior thus to borrow 
without leave from one source, than to utterly omit, as he does, 
all mention of the most interesting details of those curious 
recollections to be found in other sources (in the European 
Magazine, liii. 373-375 ; and in the Gentleman's Magazine, 
lxxxvii. 277-278). At p. 220 the origin of Goldsmith's first 
connection with literature, and the peculiar engagement he 
entered into, are related without a hint of having been derived 
from p. 60 of the Percy Memoir. 

At p. 244, the sudden and disconcerting visit of Charles 
Goldsmith to London is referred to his having heard of Oliver's 
great friends through a letter to Mrs. Lawder, although there 
is proof, but a few pages on (268), that Oliver could have 
written no such letter ; and Mr. Prior had, in truth, simply 
copied the fact from Northcote's Life of Reynolds (i. 332-333). 
An original letter is given at pp. 246-251, full of interest 
and character, without anything to inform the reader that he 
might have found it at pp. 40-45 of the Percy Memoir ; nor 
would it be very clear to him, even though Bishop Percy is 
mentioned in a note, that the letter at pp. 259-262 had been 
copied from the same source (50-52) ; still less that the long 
and characteristic fragment of a letter at pp. 275-278 is also 
but a verbatim copy from pp. 46-49 of the same ill-treated 
authority, and that the master-piece of all Goldsmith's epis- 
tolary writing, for the varied interest of its contents, has 
been bodily transferred without acknowledgment from pp. 
53-59 of the one book to pp. 297-303 of the other. 

At pp. 370-372, an anecdote is related as having been told 
by Goldsmith himself "with considerable humour;" but the 
story is ill-told, and with no mention" of the printed authority 
from which it was derived (in the European Magazine, xxiv. 
259-260). Precisely the same remark I have to repeat of the 
stories at pp. 422-424, and of the statement at p. 495 for 






PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



which an erroneous authority is given. These will be found 
in the European Magazine, xxiv. 92, 93, and 94. " The remem- 
" brance of Bishop Percy" is invoked for another whimsical 
anecdote at p. 377, when the exact page of the memoir (62-63) 
which contains it, might with equal ease and more propriety 
have been named. 

Thus far Mr. Prior's first volume; in which I have indicated 
scarcely any facts, for the use of which even as he had borrowed 
them himself, except that I never sought to put them forth 
as my own discoveries, I was not assailed and insulted by him. 
I now proceed in the same way, with all possible brevity, 
through the second volume of his book : merely premising, as 
a help to those who would have some clue to this perpetual 
and strange desire to represent as from oral or written com- 
munication facts derived from printed sources, that Mr. Prior 
took occasion in the course of his attack upon me expressly 
to lay down the doctrine, that what has been printed for any 
given number of years can no longer be held new, or regarded 
in the light of a discovery ; and as, in his own esteem, he is 
nothing if not a discoverer, and by consequence a proprietor, 
of facts, there ought perhaps to be little to surprise the reader 
in the foregoing and following examples. 



At pp. 1-11 of the second volume there is a vast deal about 
Goldsmith's Oratorio of the Captivity, about the fact of 
two copies being still extant in his handwriting, and about 
Mr. Prior being enabled to print for the first time " from that 
"which appears the most correct transcript;" the reader being 
kept quite ignorant that already this poem had been printed, 
from a copy in Goldsmith's handwriting at the least as curious 
as Mr. Prior's, and certainly as correct (the one having been 
made for Newbery, and the other for Dodsley, and the latest 



kx PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

in transcription presenting only a few changes of text from the 
other), in the octavo edition of the Miscellaneous Works 
published by the London "trade " in 1820. 

At p. 55 a story is repeated from the recollections of Miss 
Reynolds, communicated to Mr. Croker, which had already 
been far better told in the Gentleman' 's Magazine for July 
1797. In pp. 80-94 a great clutter is made about the ballad 
of Edwin and Angelina, as to which all that was really essential 
is told in pp. 74-76 of the Memoir by Percy, whose personal 
connection with the dispute arising out of it gives peculiar 
authority to his statement. 

At p. 130 the assertion about Goldsmith's having got a 
large sum for what might seem a small labour, put forth as an 
exaggeration reported by others which " he took no pains to 
" contradict," but to which he would " in substance reply " &c« 
is all taken without acknowledgment from Cooke's narrative 
in the European Magazine (xxiv. 94) ; in which the exaggera- 
tion, such as it is, is most emphatically assigned to Goldsmith 
himself. At p. 135 the whimsical anecdote described to have 
teen told to Dr. Percy, "with some humour by the Duchess 
" of Northumberland," might more correctly have been quoted 
from p. 68-69 of the Percy Memoir. 

At p. 139 there occurs, at last, formal mention of a person 
"admitted to considerable intimacy with him, Mr. "William 
" Cooke, a barrister, known as the writer of a work on dramatic 
" genius, and of a poem, &c "; of whom it is added that " he 
" related many amusing anecdotes of the poet from personal 
" knowledge ;" but where the anecdotes are to be found is care- 
fully suppressed, nor indeed could any one imagine that they 
had ever found their way into print. At p. 139-140 a highly 
characteristic story of Goldsmith is given as from the relation 
of this Mr. Cooke, " corroborated to the writer by the late 
" Eichard Sharpe, Esq., to whom Mr. Cooke told it more than 
" once ; " 'the story being nothing more than a transcript from 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xxi 

Taylor's Records of his Life (i. 107-110), published four years 
before Mr. Prior wrote. 

At p. 140-141, one of Cooke's most amusing stories is ill-told 
without a mention of its printed source (Eur op. Mag. xxiv. 
260). At p. 167 an incident is given from Mrs. Piozzi's relation, 
though with no mention of her book (Anecdotes, 244-246) ; and 
connected with it is a formal confirmation of her mistake as to 
the club's night of meeting, which the very slight diligence of 
turning to p. 72 of the Percy Memoir would have enabled Mr. 
Prior to correct. And at pp. 175, 178 (where certain lines are 
quoted without allusion to an anecdote current at the time which 
had given them their only point), 181, 182,andl97, circumstances 
and traits of character are set forth without the least acknow- 
ledgment from Cooke's printed papers (European Magazine, 
xxiv. 170, 422, xxv. 184, xxiv. 172, 261, and 429), with only such 
occasional mystification of the reader as that " a jest of the poet 
"was repeated by Mr. Cooke" (197), or that "Bishop Percy in 
"conversation frequently alluded to these habits " (182). 

At pp. 194-196, a long passage is given from Colman's 
Eandom Records (i. 110-113) ; at p. 207 a business-agreement 
of Goldsmith's as "drawn up by himself" is given from the 
Percy Memoir (78) ; and at pp. 220-223 a letter from Oliver to 
Maurice Groldsmith is copied from the same source (86-89), — 
without a clue in any of these cases to the book which contains 
the original. 

At p. 237-238 we are informed that Mr. Percival Stockdale's 
Memoirs "furnishes scarcely an allusion to Groldsmith. His 
"papers, however, supply an anecdote communicated by a 
I lady eminent for her writings in fiction, his friend, and whom 
1 the writer has likewise the honour, &c. &c. &c." And then 
the anecdote, professing to be transcribed by Miss Jane Porter 
from the manuscripts of Mr. Stockdale, turns out to be a literal 
transcription from that very Memoirs of the worthy gentleman 
(ii. 136-137), which had been published nearly thirty years 



xxii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

before Mr. Prior's book, and in which Mr. Prior had been able 
to find " scarcely an allusion " to Groldsmith. 

At pp. 254-269 there is a long rigmarole about the identity 
of Lissoy and Auburn, and about the alehouse &c rebuilt by 
Mr. Hogan, — all professing to be the result of written com- 
munication or personal inquiry, — not a syllable of which may 
not be found in Mangin's Essay (140-143) ; in Mr. JSe well's 
elaborate and highly illustrated quarto edition of the Poetical 
Works (1811 : " with remarks attempting to ascertain chiefly 
" from local observation the actual scene of the Deserted Vil- 
" lage : " 61-80), and in Mr. Hogan's own account in the Gentle- 
mans Magazine (xc. 618-622), — not one of these authorities 
being once named by Mr. Prior. 

At p. 288-289 we have a charming fragment of a letter to 
Reynolds transferred without acknowledgment from the Percy 
Memoir (90-91) ; at p. 300, an agreement with Davies is 
silently taken from an earlier page (79) ; at p. 375, a curious 
letter of Tom Paine' s to Groldsmith is so taken from a later 
page (96-98) ; and at pp. 328-330, an admirable letter is in 
like manner copied, and not even correctly copied, from the 
same mal-treated book (92-94). 

At p. 309 an anecdote is given from an earlier volume of the 
magazine which contained the printed papers by Cooke 
{European Magazine, xxi. 88), but with careful avoidance 
of any clue to the authority. At pp. 313-321 not a few of 
the traits of Hiffernan are borrowed from one of Cooke's 
papers respecting him (European Magazine, xxv. 110-184), 
still with no hint of any such source. At p. 349-350, a very 
characteristic story of Groldsmith is copied without allusion 
from the Eercy Memoir (100). At p. 353 an incident is men- 
tioned as " according to the late Mr. John Taylor," which is 
simply copied from Taylor's Records (i. 118). And so, at 
pp. 370 and 401, where the incidents given are silently 
transcribed from Northcote (Life of Reynolds,!. 288 and 286). 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xxiii 

At p. 381 a pleasant anecdote appears as though originally 
told, but which Cooke had long before related in print 
{European Magazine, xxiv. 261) ; at p. 386-387, two letters 
are appropriated without allusion to Column's Posthumous 
Letters (ed : 1820 ; 180), or to Grarrick's Correspondence (ed : 
1830; i. 527), where they first appeared; at pp. 389, 465, 
aud 481, anecdotes, full of character, which Cooke certainly 
1 deserved the credit of having told in print {European Magazine, 
[xxiv. 173, 261, and 262), are given without an allusion to him; 
at pp. 421 and 473, two anecdotes, the former being one of the 
most charming recorded of Groldsmith, which had been told in 
the same magazine, but in a later and an earlier number than 
those in which Cooke wrote (lv. 443. and xix. 94), are silently 
taken in the same way ; at p. 465-466, a curious trait given as 
"mentioned by Malone" might as well have been given as 
copied from his Life of Dry den (i. 518) ; and, for a final act 
of justice to the Percy Memoir, let me add that the libel at 
p. 408-409, the unfinished fragment at p. 410, the address to 
the public at p. 413-414, the amusing verses at p. 419, and the 
Oglethorpe letter at p. 422-423, are all drawn, with the same 
3xtraordinary absence of all mention of their source, from that 
drst authentic record of Groldsmith' s career (103-105, 105-106, 
L07-108, 102-103, and 95-96). 

To close the ungracious task which has thus been forced 
jpon me. Letters quoted by Mr. Prior are never referred to 
■he place from which he draws them, except in the few instances 
vhere a really original letter happens to have fallen in his 
^ay. Whether it be at p. 390, where a letter of Groldsmith' s 
co Cradock (in Memoirs, i. 225) is misplaced, and referred to 
vhat it has no connection with ; or at p. 429, where a letter of. 
Groldsmith's to Garrick (in Memoirs of Doctor Burney, i. 272- 
>73) is? given as though personal communication had drawn 
It from Madame d'Arblay ; or at p. 470, where a letter of 
Beattie's (in Forbes's Life, ii. 69) is made use of- or at pp. 369, 



xxiv PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

472, 482, 488, and 510, where quotations are printed, and in 
two instances misprinted, from letters of Beauclerc's (iri 
Hardy's Life of Lord Charlemont, 178, 163, 177, 178, and 
179) ; or at p. 526, where we find a letter from Maurice 
Goldsmith to Mr. Hawes (in Hawes's Account, 22), — still the 
reader is left without a clue to the source of these letters, in 
any single instance, and may suppose, for anything to the 
contrary revealed to him by Mr. Prior, that all have proceeded 
from that amazing fund of private and exclusive discovery, on 
which this gentleman founds his claim to an exclusive property 
in their use. 



And now, having gone through Mr. Prior's volumes, as I 
hope for the last time, I shall content myself with this farther 
remark, that I ground my claim to whatever merit my own 
volumes may possess, on the completeness of their contrast to 
his, and on the conviction that no two books so utterly unlike 
each other were ever before written on the same subject. Por 
a help to the reader's judgment in one direction only, 1? 
subjoin a mention of those pages in my volumes which contain 
facts, anecdotes, or personal traits exclusively relating to 
Groldsmith himself, here included for the first time in any 
Life of him ; and I have placed an asterisk before the new 1 ; 
facts or characteristics so affecting bim personally, added to 
the present edition. "Were I to attempt so to distinguish 
the new matter introduced having relation to the time, 
and filling up the picture I seek to present of Goldsmith's 
associates and friends, it would involve a specification of 
almost every page. 

In the first volume, 14, *39, *53-54, *61, 68, 82, *82-83, 
*83-85, *85-87, 129, 157-158, 169, *190, 265, 286, 287, *289,- 
*296, 307, *311, 313, *325, 328, 366, 367, *379-380, *395, 
397, *405, and *441-443. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xxv 

In the second volume, 9, 18, 19-20, 22, 30, *39, 42-43, 56, 
59-60, 61, 65-68, 70, 71, 75, 76-81, 100-101, 102, *104-105, 
*106-107, 108, 114-115, 115, 119-120, 121-122, 125, *126, 
128, *130-131, 131, 132, 133, 134, 139, 141, 142-143, 144- 
145, 148, 157-158, 158-159, *159, 160, 163-164, 168, 179, 
180, 194, 203-204, 205, 213, 220, *221, 227, *233, 237, *255- 
256, *265-274, 275, 278-280, 282, 287, *293, *294-295, *295- 
297, 305, *312, 317, *325, 326, 328, *336-337, *339, 344, 
*350, 357, 358, *359, 361-362, *363-365, 371, *374, *378, 
379, *381-382, 390, 398, *402-404, *406, *409, *414-416, 418, 
420-421, 428-429, 430-431, 434-436, 438-440, *441-444, *451, 
*453, *456, *458-459, *460, 464, 466, 467, and *470. 

In conclusion, with particular reference to a change in the 
title of this biography, intended more correctly to express 
the extended aim and character it now assumes, perhaps the 
reader may be requested to remember that while " the times," 
as well as "the life," are meant to be comprised, the persons 
introduced appear always as far as possible in the character 
and proportions which they bore to the society of their day, 
during the life, and not beyond it ; that Burke is not yet the 
impeacher of Hastings, nor Boswell the biographer of John- 
son ; and that in thus bringing within the circle of view not 
a little of the social as well as literary characteristics, of the 
arts, the theatres, and the politics, of this fragment of the 
eighteenth century, still the object has strictly been to show 
in more vivid lights from each, the central figure of Goldsmith 
himself, not exaggerated, not unduly exalted, but with all that 
there was in him to admire and love, and all there was around 
him to suggest excuse or pity. 

J. F. 

58, Lincoln's Inn Fields, 
30th January, 1854. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



FIRST BOOK. 



Title-page, Portrait by Reynolds 
Frontispiece (Occupations preced 

ino Authorship) 
Goldsmith learning his Letters 
The Sizar and Ballad-singer . 
Goldsmith and his College Tutor 



The Alehouse at Ballymahon 
The Reception at Ballymahon 
Goldsmith and Voltaire . 
The Reception in London . 
Poor Physician to the Poor . 
At Doctor Milner's 



PAGE 

25 
29 

43 
48 
50 
55 



SECOND BOOK. 



Frontispiece (Writing for Bread). 63 

At the Dunciad 67 

Goldsmith and Horace Walpole . 75 

Goldsmith's Garret . . . . 80 



An Author and his Readers 
Green Arbour-court . 
Goldsmith and his Landlady 
Mr. Percy visits Goldsmith 



102 
110 



THIRD BOOK. 



Frontispiece (Goldsmith and the 

Booksellers) .... 125 

Profiting by the Spiders . . . 135 

Goldsmith's Night Wanderings . 137 

Hogarth at Islington . . . 176 

After Supper at the Mitre . . 192 



Reynolds at Islington . . . 201 

Johnson at Islington . . . 206 

Doctor Goldsmith 226 

Facsimile of a Letter by Goldsmith 263 

Goldsmith Conjuring . . . 268 
At the Window in Garden-court . 



FOURTH BOOK. 



Frontispiece (Dignities of Author- 
ship) 289 

After the Comedy . 297 

The Shoemaker's Holiday . . . 307 
In Westminster Abbey and on 

Temple Bar 318 

Garrick and the Bloom-coloured 
Coat 331 



The Landing at Calais . . . 356 

The Royal Academy Dinner . . 373 

Boswell's Election to the Club . 432 
Goldsmith and Revnolds at Vaux- 

hall 449 

The Author's Present and Future 472 



TABLE OF CONTENTS: 



ANALYTICAL AND CHEONOLOGICAL. 



The Author to the Reader 



. 1 



Book I. 1728 to 1757. 

THE SIZAR, STUDENT, TRAVELLER, APOTHECARY'S JOURNEYMAN, USHER, 

and poor physician. Pages 5 to 61. 





CHAPTER I. 






1728-1745. 






SCHOOL DAYS AND HOLIDAYS. 




1728. 

i 


(10th Nov.) Oliver's birth 
Oliver's father, Charles Gold 


PAGB 

7 


1 


smith .... 


7 


1730. 


Removal to Lissoy . 


8 


; m. 2. 


Sisters and brothers 


8 




Elizabeth Delap 


8 


1731. 
Jit. 3. 


The Dame's school of Lissoy 


9 


1734. 


The Master's village school 


9 


Jit. 6. 


Vagrant tastes . 

Blind Carolan's wayside melo 


9 




dies .... 


9 




Attack of small-pox 


9 


1736. 


The Elphin school 


10 


Jit. 8. 


Bad and good spirits 


10 


1737. 


Fun at Uncle John's . 


10 


Mt. 9. 


Retaliation 


11 


1738. 


Different sources and forms o 


f 


mt 10 


vanity .... 


11 




Holofernes and Goodman Dul 


L 12 




Charles Goldsmith's charactei 


- 12 




Family failings 


12 




Worldly and unworldly advan 






tages .... 


13 


1739. 


The Athlone school . . 


13 


Jit. 11 


. Genius exhibited and trade 


i 




abandoned . 


13 


1741. 


The Edgeworthstown school 


13 


Jit. 13 


A kind schoolmaster 


13 



1743. Classical studies . 
Mt. 15. Athletic sports . 

1744. Oliver's last holidays . 
Jit. 16. Mistakes of a Night 

Disposition to 



PAGB 

14 
14 
14 
14 
15 



CHAPTER II. 

1745-1749. 



1745. Darkening prospects . . 15 
Jilt. 17. Sizarship suggested . . . 16 

Various opinions thereon . 16 

Uncle Contaiine . . . . 16 
A Sizarship obtained . .17 
Henry Flood and Edmund 

Burke 17 

Uses of a flute .... 17 

1746. Lounging at the college gates . 17 
Jit. 18. Fellow collegians . ' . . . 18 

The Sizar's "friends" . . 18 

1747. Charles Goldsmith's death . . 18 
Jit. 19. Squalid poverty . . . 18 

Writing street-ballads . . . 18 

Fame on a small scale . . 19 

A prisoner in the bed-ticking . 20 

Sensibility not benevolence . 20 

Euclid versus Horace . . . 20 
A reverend tutor . . .21 

Gray's dislike of mathematics 21 

Mr. Theaker Wilder's brutality 21 
b 2 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 





PAGE 

A riot and its punishment . 21 




A dancing party and its result 


22 


1748. 


Flight from college and return 


23 


Mt. 20 


Day-dreams . . . . 
Centre of gravity disturbed, 


23 




and Oliver turned down . 


23 


1749. 


(27th Feb.) B. A 


23 


Mt. 21. 


Signature in the College Library 

CHAPTER III. 

1749-1752. 

THREE YEARS OF IDLENES& 


23 


1749. 


Oliver at his mother's in Bally- 




Mt. 21 


mahon : 


24 




Family changes . . . . 


24 




Errands run by Master Noll . 


24 




The village inn 


25 




River walks and rustic games 


25 




Resources of Irish society . . 


26 


1750. 


Weakness of temperament and 




Mt. 22 


strength of genius . 


26 




Making the most of idleness . 


27 




The habit of cheerfulness . . 


27 


1751. 


Application to the Bishop 


28 


Mt. 23 


Rejected as a clergyman . . 


28 




Becomes a tutor 


2S 



Card-playing versus Teaching . 28 
Vagabond without the pen, 

Gentleman with it . . 29 
The adventure of Fiddleback . 29 
1752. Enters as a lawyer, and loses 
Mt. 24. the entrance fee . .30 
Family quarrels and reconcilia- 
tions 30 

Flute and harpsichord . . 30 



CHAPTER IV. 

1752-1755. 

PREPARING FOR A MEDICAL DEGREE. 

1752. Dean Goldsmith advises Oliver 31 
Mt. 24. Starts for Edinburgh, medical 

student 31 

Lodging-house experiences . 31 

A challenge to the theatre . . 31 
Fellow-students . . .32 

Helps himself by teaching . . 32 
Letters to Bryanton and Uncle 

Contarine . . . .32 

1753. A trip to the Highlands . . 33 
Mt. 25. Money wasted, Burke and Gold- 
smith . .... 33 

Ghosts of tailors' bills . . . 34 
"Silver loops and garment 

blue" . . . .34 
Unpublished leaf of an Edin- 
burgh ledger . . . . 34 
Grateful letters . . .35 
The " Best of men " to Oliver . 35 
Land rats and water rats . . 85 
Jacobite adventure at New- 
castle 35 

A rrivcd at Leyden . . . 30 

Three specimens of womankind 3G 



1754. 
Ait. 26 



1755. Pursuits at Leyden . 
Mt. 27. Teaching and gambling 
Letters lost 

Flowers for Uncle Contarine 
(February) Leaves Leyden . 



PAGK 

. 36 

. 36 
. 37 
. 37 
. 37 



CHAPTER V. 
1755-1756. 

TRAVELS. 

1755. Death and example of Baron 
Mt. 27. de Holberg ... 3 

Scheme to travel on foot . . 

Dining in convents, sleeping 

in barns, and playing the 

flute 38 

The Medical Degree . . . 39 
Louvain, Flanders, and Holland 
Musical mendicancy 

In Paris 40 

A thrifty young pupil . . 41 
Rouelle's lectures and Clairon's 

acting 41 

Sees into the future of France 42 
Voltaire's exile from Paris .- 42 
Visit to Voltaire in Geneva . 42 
The English attacked and de- 
fended 44 

Lecture rooms of Germany . 44 

In Switzerland . . 44 

Portions of the Traveller written 44 

Character of the Swiss . . 45 

Mental discipline in travel . 46 

In Piedmont . . . . 46 
Italian cities . . . .46 

1756. Disputing for a livelihood . . 46 
Mt. 28. Returning to England . . 47 



CHAPTER VI. 
1756-1757. 

PECKHAM SCHOOL AND GRUB-STREET. 



1756. 

Mt. 28, 



1757. 
Mt. 29. 



(February) In England . . 
Low comedy in a barn . 
Employed at a country apothe- 
cary's 

In London as Usher . . . 
Penalties of a feigned name . 
Among the beggars in Axe- 



Apothecary's journeyman . 

Visit to an old fellow-student . 49 

Sets up as Poor Physician . 49 
Becomes press-corrector to Mr. 

Richardson . . .50 
Sees Young the poet . . . 51 
Attempts a tragedy . . 51 
Proposes to decipher the Writ- 
ten Mountains . . . 51 
Assistant at the Peckham Aca- 
demy 51 

Doctor Milner's tenth daughter 52 

Unpublished Anecdotes . . 52 

Miss Milner's recollections . 52 

A good-natured practical joke 53 

Cure for a hopeless passion . 53 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



The Usher challenges the Foot- 


'AGE 


PAGE 

An author's prospects . . 58 


boy 


54 


Interval between patrons and 




The triumph .... 


55 


public .... 


58 


A boy among boys . . . 


55 


Literature used and despised . 


59 


Bitter mortifications 


55 


Origin of Grub-street . . . 


59 


A pert young gentleman . . 


56 


Sam Johnson and the lower 




Master Bishop and the apple- 




class of writers . 


60 


woman . 


56 


Mr. John Jackson and the 




Meets Griffiths the bookseller . 


57 


higher class . . . . 


60 


"Writes a specimen-review . . 


57 


The Beign of periodicals . 


60 


Leases himself to Griffiths 


57 


Goldsmith at the Dunciad . . 


61 











Book II. 1757 to 1759. 

authorship by compulsion. Pages 63 to 124. 



CHAPTER I. 

1757. 

REVIEWING FOR MR. AND MRS. GRIFFITHS. 

1757. Author by Profession . . . 65 
Et. 29. In the Griffith's-livery . . 65 
Writing for the Monthly Review 66 
Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths superin- 
tending 66 

Northern Antiquities . . . 67 

The tragedy of Douglas . . 68 

Why Garrick rejected it . . 68 

Advantages of persecution . . 68 
A polite pooh ! pooh ! .69 

Wilkie's Epigoniad . . . 70 

Distinguished Mr. Puffe . . 70 
Want of critical depth no proof 

of literary envy . . . 71 
Bonnell Thornton and George 

Colman . . . .71 

Criticising and praising Burke. 71 
Smollett, Hume, and Warbur- 

ton 72 

Jonas Hanway and his pro- 
jects 73 

Vails to servants put down . . 73 

Umbrellas forced into use . 73 

The Journey from Portsmouth . 73 
Polignac's Anti-Lucretius and 

Gray's Mastor Tommy . 74 

Goldsmith and Horace "Walpole 75 

Odes by Mr. Gray . . . . 75 

Walpole's quarrel with Gray . 75 

Habit of depreciation . . 76 

Lessons in poetry. . . . 76 

Gray praised by Goldsmith. . 76 

Johnson's influence yet unfelt. 78 



CHAPTER II. 

1757-1758. 

MAKING SHIFT TO EXIST. 

^757. Quarrel with Griffiths . . 78 
St. 29. Close of engagement on the 

Monthly Revievi . ... 78 



Interpolation of articles ... 78 
Mr. Griffiths's opinion of Gold- 
smith .... 79 
In a Garret near Salisbury-sq . 79 
Doctor James Grainger. . . 79 
Brother Charles visits the gar- 
ret 79 

A sore disappointment . . 80 
Letter to brother-in-law Hod- 
son 81 

A picture for Irish friends . . 81 
Irish memories and Irish pro- 
mises 82 

Poor physician and poorer 

poet 82 

175S. (February) Translating under 
Mt. 30. a feigned name . . .82 

Loses hope and courage . . 83 
Gives up literature . . .84 

Goes back to Peckham school . 84 
A medical appointment prom- 
ised ... .84 

One more literary effort . . 85 

Irish independence . . . 85 

Released from Peckham school 85 



CHAPTER III. 

1758. 

ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE FROM LITERATURE. 



1758. A new '. 
Mt. 30. (August) Working for his outfit 

Letter to Edward Mills . . 86 
What an Irish relative might 

do 87 

"What the Irish relative did . . 87 
Letter to Robert Bryanton . 88 
The Future invoked against 

the Present . . . . S9 
Ordinary fate of Authors . . 89 
Bread wanting, and milk-score 

unpaid 89 

Despair in the garret . . 90 
Starving where Butler and 

Otway starved. . . . 91 
Letter to Cousin Jane . . .91 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



A fancy portrait . . . . 92 
Living death of Uncle Conta- 

rine 93 

Proposals for a subscription to 

a book 93 

Appointed medical officer at 

Coromandel. . . .93 



CHAPTER IV. 
1758. 

ESCAPE PREVENTED. 

1758. Describes the appointment to 

Mt. 30. Hodson 93 

Fine words for Irish hearing . 94 
Grand style of the Marquis of 

Griffiths .... 94 
A hopeful group of friends . . 95 
Smollett and the " Old Gentle- 
woman " of the Monthly 

Review 95 

Hamilton's Critical Review . . 96 
Reviews for Hamilton . . 96 
A thought of Dryden . . . 97 
Speaking out for the Author's 

profession . . . .97 
Green-Arbour-court . . . 97 
The flute still in tune . . 98 
(November) Coromandel ap- 
pointment lost . . . 99 
Resolves to be a hospital mate. 99 
Griffiths and the tailor . . 100 
Four articles for the Monthly 

Review 100 

(December) Examined and re- 
jected at Surgeons' Hall . 100 
The virtue of necessity . . 101 
Driven back to Literature . . 101 



CHAPTER V. 
1758—1759. 

DISCIPLINE OF SORROW, 

1758. Pawns his new clothes for his 
Sit. 30. landlady . . . .102 

Griffiths demands payment for 

them . . * . . . 102 
Letter in possession of the bio- 
grapher .... 102 
Griffiths calls names . . . 103 
Which is the sharper and 

villain? . . . .103 
The gain in sorrow . , . 104 
Beams of morning . . . 104 
Writing a Life of Voltaire . . 104 
(February) Letter to Henry 
Goldsmith. . . .105 



Self-painted portraiture. . . 
A poor wandering uncle's ex 

ample . 
Heroi-comical verses . 
Poetry and prose . . , 
The ale-house hero 



PAGE 

105 

106 

107 
107 
108 



CHAPTER VI. 
1759. 

WORK AND HOPE. 

1759. Voltaire and Ned Purdon . 108 
Mt. 31. Introduced to Mr. Percy . . 109 
Mr. Percy's visit to the garret. 109 
A Newgate biography . . .110 
Reviewing for Smollett . .111 
Laughing at Elegies . . . Ill 
Forecasting the future . .111 
Another scheme for travel . 112 
A reverend and irritable dra- 
matist 112 

The fashionable family novel . 113 

Adieu to both Reviews . .113 

Close of his account with the 

owl and the ass . . . 113 



CHAPTER VII. 

1759. 

AN APPEAL FOR AUTHORS BY PROFESSION. 

1759. (April) Publication of the Bn- 
Mt. 31. quiry into Polite Learning . 114 
Bad critics and sordid book- 
sellers 114 

Truths of a hard experience . 115 
Reviews and Magazines assail- 
ed 115 

A frightful monosyllable . . 116 
Smollett's answer, and Grif- 

fiths's insult . . . 116 
Dirt flung at Goldsmith . . .117 
"What Walpole and Hume 
thought of Grub-street 
quarrels . . . .118 
Evil influences on literature . 118 
Right encouragements to au- 
thors 119 

Grants of money not required . 120 
The days of patronage . .120 
Wit and its disadvantages . .121 
Genius and its rewards . . ] 21 
Collins and Goldsmith . .122 
Compensations . . . .122 
Warnings . . ... 123 
What has been done for Litera- 
ture 123 

What Literature may do . . 124 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Book III. 1759 to 1767. 

authorship by choice. Pages 125 to 287. 



CHAPTER I. 

1759. 

WRITING THE "BEE." 

PAGE 

Activity in Grub-street . . 127 
Dullness and her progeny . . 127 
A doubtful recruit . . .128 
Samuel Johnson . . . 128 
The knell of patronage . . 129 
Encouragement and example 129 
Thirty pounds a year . . . 129 
A Great Cham in great dis- 
tress 130 

Society gathering round John- 
son . . ' . . . 130 
Poverty and independence . 131 
(October) First number of the 

Bee 131 

Playhouse criticism . . . 132 

Second number of the Bee . 132 
Third number of the -Bee . .133 

Fourth number of the Bee . 133 

Booksellers' literature . . 134 
Writing for the Busy Body 

and the Lady's Magazine . 135 

Fifth number of the Bee . . 135 
Goldsmith's first mention of 

Johnson .... 135 

An evening with a bookseller 136 

Night wanderings . . . 136 

Sympathy with the wretched 137 



CHAPTER II. 

1759. 

DAVID GARRICK. 

(November 29th) Close of the 
Bee 

Love of the theatre . . . 
Garrick and Ralph . 
Authors and managers . . 
A comic or a tragic Lilliput ? 
Garrick's management . 
Injustice to players and 
wrongs to dramatists . . 
Goldsmith attacks Garrick . 
Garrick resents the attack . 
Inconsiderate expressions 
The actor's claims . 



137 

13S 
138 
138 
139 
139 

140 
140 
141 
142 
142 



CHAPTER III. 

1759-1760. 

OVERTURES PROM SMOLLETT AND MR. 
NEWBERY. 

1759. (December) Important visitors 
Mtt. 31. in Green Arbour-court . 143 

Candour towards an unsuc- 
cessful author . . . 143 



1760. (January 1) Smollett's British 
Mt. 32. Magazine 

Essays contributed by Gold 
smith 

Cheerful philosophy . 

A puff by Goldsmith 

A country Wow- wow . 

(Jan. 12) Newbery's news- 
paper 

A Daily Paper then and now 

Goldsmith engaged for the 
Public Ledger . . . 

A Guinea an Article 



CHAPTER IV. 

1760. 

"THE CITIZEN OP THE WORLD." 

1760. (January 24 and 29) The first 
iEt. 32. and second Chinese Letters 

Newspaper shadows and reali- 
ties .... 
Griffiths swallows the leek 
The Citizen of the World 
Social reforms suggested in it 
Quacks and pretenders 
Law and. Church 
Property and poverty 
Mad-dog cries 
Pictures of the day. 
Laurence Sterne 
Goldsmith's attack on 

tram Shandy 
Beau Tibbs and the Man in 

Black . 
Jack Pilkington 
The great Duchess and the 

white mice . . . , 
Tea party at the White Con 

duit Gardens . 
Supper party at the Chapter 

Coffee-house 
Dinner at Blackwall 
Roubiliac and Goldsmith 
Hawkins's exposure exposed 
Humble recreations 
Polly and the Pickpocket . 
The State reminded of its 

duty .... 
Editing the Lady's Magazine 
Writing prefaces 
Better lodgings 



144 
145 
145 
146 

146 
147 

148 
148 



Tris 



148 
149 
149 
149 
150 
150 
151 
151 
151 
152 

152 

152 
154 

154 



155 
155 
155 
155 
156 
156 

156 

157 
157 
157 



CHAPTER V. 

1761-1762. 

FELLOWSHIP WITH JOHNSON. 

1761. Wine-Office-court . . . 158 
Mt. 33. A supper in honour of John- 
son 159 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Johnson in a new suit . . 159 
Lost anecdotes . . . 159 
Booksellers better than pa- 
trons 160 

1762. Pamphlet on the Cock-lane 
JEt. 34. Ghost . . . .160 
Drudging for Newbery . . 161 
Small debts . . . .162 
Visits Tunbridge and Bath . 162 
Life of Beau Nash . . . 162 
Unconscious self-revelations . 163 
A good-natured man . . 163 
Johnson pensioned . . . 164 
Shebbeare (of the pillory) pen- 
sioned .... 164 
A literaiy Prime Minister . 165 



CHAPTER VI. 
1762. 

INTRODUCTIONS AT TOM DAVIES'S. 

1762. An actor turned bookseller 
JEt. 34. The shop in Russell-street 
Garrick and Da vies 
A Patron .... 
Men of feeling 
Johnson and Foote . 
Burke at the Robin Hood 
A Master of the Rolls . 
Goldsmith and Johnson as de 

baters . 
The Cherokee Kings 
Peter Annet 
Completing a history 
Memorialising Lord Bute 
At woi-k on the Vicar of Wake 

field .... 
At dinner with Tom Davies 
James Boswell . . . 
Sayings and doings in Lon 

don .... 
Boswell and the Cow 
A strange dispenser of fame 
Robert Levett . 



165 
165 
166 
166 
166 
167 
167 
167 

167 

167 
168 
168 
16S 



170 
170 

170 
171 
171 
171 



CHAPTER VII. 

1762-1763. 

HOGARTH AND REYNOLDS. 

1762. Mrs. Fleming at Islington . 172 
JEt. 34. The publisher-paymaster . 172 

1763. Compiling . . . .173 
JEt. 35. Histories and Prefaces . .173 

Letters from a Nobleman to his 

son 173 

Visitors at Islington . . . 174. 

William Hogarth . . . 175 

Sympathies with Goldsmith . 175 

Admiration of Johnson . . 175 

Portrait of the Landlady . 175 

Joshua Reynolds . . . 170 

Not a petty quarrel . . 177 

East and West iii Leicester-sq. 177 



CHAPTER VIII. 

17G3. 

THE CLUB AND ITS FIRST MEMBERS. 

FAGK 

1763. A club proposed . . .178 
JEt. 35. Members and rules . . . 178 
What it became . . .179 
What it was at first . . . 179 
Mr. John Hawkins . . .180 
Loose characters . . . . 180 
An unclubable man . . . 181 
Irish adventurers . . . 181 

Burke's outset in life . . 181 
What kept him down . . . 1S2 
A wonderful talker . . . 183 
Johnson and Burke talking . 183 
Conversational contests . . 1 84 
Bennet Langton . . . 184 
Topham Beauclerc . . . 185 
A prudent mother and a frisk- 
ing philosopher . . . 185 
A man of fashion among scho- 
lars . . . . . 186 
Beau's secret charm . . . 186 
Being superior to one's subject 186 
Beauclerc's sallies . . . 187 
Goldsmith at the club . . 187 
Dick Eastcourt's example . . 187 
Doubtful self-assertion . . 188 

Self-distrust 188 

"It comes!" . . . .188 
Boswell sees Johnson . . . 188 
Shock the first . . . .189 

The Mitre 1S9 

The Turk's Head . . .190 
The sage taken by storm . .190 
Boswell criticizing Goldsmith 190 
A roar of applause . . . 191 
Easy familiarity . . . . 192 
Johnson's pensioners and cha- 
rities 192 

Miss Williams . . . . 192 
Levees at Inner Temple-lane . 192 
The countess and the scholar . 193 
A singular appearance . .193 
Goldsmith becomes a Templar 194 

CHAPTER IX. 

1763—1764. 

THE ARREST AND WHAT PRECEDED IT. 

1763. Compiling for Dodsley . . . 194 
JEt. 35. Growing importance . . 194 
Secret labours . . . . 195 
Singing birds captive and free 195 
195 
196 
196 
197 
197 



1764. 



Distress 

A letter to Dodsley . . . 
Johnson and Smart . 
JEt. 36. Goldsmith's Oratorio . . . 
At Islington . . . . 
Unpublished bills of his land- 
lady . 
Goody Tico SJioes 
Reynolds at Islington . . . 
Borrowing from Newbery 
Pope and Garrick . . . 
Garrick in Paris 



200 
200 
201 
201 
202 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

A rival at home . . . . 202 
Powell's success . . . 202 
O'Brien and Lady Susan . . 203 
Horace Walpole's horror . . 203 
Percy and Grainger . . . 203 
Goldsmith and Percy . . 204 
A round of visitings . . . 204 
The Thrales . . . .204 
Goldsmith arrested . . . 205 
Johnson sent for . . 205 

Who arrested him ? . . . 205 
Newbery's friendship with the 

landlady . . . .206 
Sale of the Vicar of Wakefield . 207 
What Johnson thought the 

Vicar worth . . . 207 



CHAPTER X. 



1764—1765. 

THE TRAVELLER" AND WHAT FOLLOWED 



1764. 

Mt. 3< 



(Dec. 19) Tlie Traveller pub- 
lished . . . .207 

Dedication 208 

Charles Churchill . . .208 
Legitimate satire . . . 209 

Goldsmith and Pope . . 210 
Merits of The Traveller . . 210 
Johnson's help . . . 211 

Not knowing what one means 211 
Luke's crown explained . .212 
Being partial the wrong way . 212 
Patronising airs . . . 212 

Renny dear 213 

Sacrifice of a beast . . . 213 
Charles Fox and The Traveller 213 
The Reviews . ... 213 
1765. Essays by Mr. Goldsmith . . 214 
ML 37. Edwin and Angelina . . . 215 
Charge of plagiarism . . 215 
Percy and Goldsmith . . . 216 
A hint to young writers . . 216 
At Northumberland House . 216 

An Idiot 217 

Borrowing fifteen and sixpence 217 
The best patrons . . . 218 
An agreement for ninety-nine 
years 218 



CHAPTER XI. 

1765. 

GOLDSMITH IN PRACTICE AND BURKE IN 
OFFICE. 

1765. Robert Nugent . . .219 

Sit. 37. His three wives . . . . 219 

The Grenville ministry . . 220 
Taxation of America . . . 220 

Fall of Grenville . . .221 
Burke's hopes . . . . 221 

The Rockingham party . . 221 
The new premier . . . 222 

Mr. O'Bourke . . . .222 
Garrick, Powell, and Sterne . 223 



Finessing and trick 
The Actor and the Club 
Hawkins and Garrick . 
Doctor Goldsmith 



223 
224 
224 
224 



Fine clothes and fine company 225 
Beauclerc's advice . . . 226 



CHAPTER XII. 



1765—1766. 



NEWS FOR THE CLUB, OF VARIOUS KINDS AND 
FROM VARIOUS PLACES. 



1765. 

Mt. 37. 



1766. 



Society of Arts . . . .226 
Miss Williams's Miscellanies . 227 
Johnson's Shakespeare, and his 

Doctorate . . . .227 
Chambers in Garden-court . . 227 
English in Paris . . 228 

Hume, Rousseau, Barry, and 

Boswell 228 

Walpole, enphilosophe . . 228 
A solemn coxcomb in London 228 
Johnson's treatment of books . 229 
Players and poets . . . 229 
Old friends quarrelling . . 229 
Kenrick's Falstaff . . . 230 
Goldsmith and Johnson . . 230 
Johnson ' ' making a line " . . 230 
Reappearance of Boswell . . 230 
The big man . . . . 231 
Boswell and Mr. Pitt . . 231 
(14th January) Burke enters 

Parliament . . . . 232 
Astonishment at the Club . 232 
Another marvel . . . . 233 
John and Francis Newbery . 233 
The Vicar of Wakefield . . 233 



CHAPTER XIII. 

1766. 

THE " VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 



1766. The most popular of stories . 
mt. 38. First purely domestic novel . 

Purpose of the writer . . . 

Ragged-school experiences an- 
ticipated . 

Social truths . . . . 

The gibbet and its fashions 

Charles Primrose and Abra- 
ham Adams . . . . 

Fielding's friend and Gold- 
smith's father . 

Musical-glasses . . . . 

The historical family picture . 

The wisdom of simpleness . . 

A fire-side scene 

Passages expunged . . . 

Goldsmith's influence onGoethe 

The Reviews .... 

Johnson's opinion . . . 

What the club thought of it . 

What Burke and Garrick 
thought 

Editions and translations 
63 



234 

235 



235 
235 



236 

236 
237 
237 
238 
239 
239 
240 
241 
241 
241 

241 
241 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

17(16. 

OLD DRUDGERY, AND A NEW VENTURE 
DAWNING. 

PAG* 

1766. Poems for Young Ladies . .2-12 
2Et. 38. A mistake of authorship . . 242 
Beauties of English Poetry se : 

lected 242 

Prior in polite company . . 243 
Doctor Doddridge and Nancy 

Moore 243 

Rousseau in Garrick's box . 243 
Goldsmith at the theatre . . 243 
The Clandestine Marriage . . 244 
Garrick's original draught . . 244 
Colman discontented . . 244 
Goldsmith and Newbery . . 245 
Thoughts of a comedy . . 245 
At the Devil tavern . . . 246 
Conversation Cooke . . . 246 
Dupe to an impostor . . . 246 
Adventures of a guinea . . 246 
Goldsmith and Charles Lamb's 

schoolmistress . . . 247 
Patagonians . . . .247 



CHAPTER XV. 

1766. 

THE GREAT WORLD AND ITS RULERS. 

1766. Lord Rockingham retires . . 247 
/Et. 38. Mr. Pitt and a new arrange- 
ment 247 

A king's caresses . . . 248 

Camden and Shelbume . . 248 
Charles Townshend . . . 248 
Endeavours to secure Burke . 249 
Obstructions in his way . . 249 
What he had and what he 

wanted 250 

The three gangs . . .250 
Influence of faction on litera- 
ture 250 

Pamphleteering and libelling . 251 
Uses of literature to politics . 251 
Gratitude of politics to litera- 
ture 251 

Christopher Anstey . . . 252 
Men of letters in London and 

in Paris . . . .252 
Caleb Whitefoord's cross read- 
ings . . . . 253 
(28th Dec.) Goldsmith writes a 
Grammar for five guineas . 253 



CHAPTER XVI. 

1767. 

THEATRES ROYAL COVENT-GARDEN AND 
DRURY-LANE. 

1767. (6th Jan.) Borrows one-pound 

2Et. 39. one 253 

At work on his comedy. . . 253 
Johnson promises a prologue. 254 



Johnson's interview with the 

King 254 

How his Majesty talked . . 254 
Goldsmith listening . . . 256 
Anxieties of the theatre . . 256 
Comedv sent to Garrick . . 256 
Mrs. Pritchard and Mrs. Clive 256 
Garrick and Goldsmith . . 257 
Goldsmith borrowing . . 258 
Garrick suggesting changes in 

comedy 258 

Honeywood and his original . 258 
Croaker and Suspirius . . 258 
Garrick's objections . . . 259 
Arbitration rejected . . . 260 
Goldsmith's anger . . . 260 
News of a rival management . 260 
Colman and Powell . . . 260 
Garrick's suspicions . . 261 

New management announced . 262 
Mrs. Yates deserts Garrick . . 262 
Goldsmith joins Colman . . 262 
Preparations for war . . . 262 
Letter and comedy to Colman 263 
Writes to Garrick . . .265 
Garrick's answer . . . 266 

Foote at the Haymarket . . 266 
Goldsmith at a new play . . 266 
Jack and Gill . . . .267 
Ways with children . . . 267 
Goldsmith's, Garrick's, and 

Foote 's . . . .267 
George Colman the younger . 267 
Goldsmith conjuring . . ; 268 



CHAPTER XVII. 

1767. 

THE WEDNESDAY CLUB. 

1767. Goldsmith compiling 
JEt. 39. Newbery's last illness , . 

Success of Goldsmith's Letters . 

Tom Davies proposes a Roman 
History . 

Lectureship on Civil Law . . 

Humble clubs .... 

At the Devil, the Bedford, and 
the Globe . . 

Wednesday Club 

Doctor Glover . . . . 

Adventure at Hampstead 

Hugh Kelly 

Imitation of Churchill 

Nottingham ale . . . . 

Original of Ned Purdon's epi- 
taph 

Melancholy in mirth . . . 

Canonbury Tower . 



270 
•270 

270 
270 
271 
271 
271 
272 
272 

272 

27:: 

273 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

1767. 

PATRONS OF LITERATURE. 

Viscount 



1767. Robert Nugent 
iEt. 39. Clare . 



274 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Defeats of Chatham's Ministry 274 
George Grenvilie and Charles 

Townshend . . .275 
New project to tax America . 275 
Passionate ridicule of Burke . 275 
Chatham's suppressed gout . 276 
Chatham and the King . . 276 
Charles Townsheud's death . 276 
The Grafton Ministry . . 276 
Lord North and Mr. Jenkin- 

son 276 

Short-sighted statesmen . . 277 
King's friends . . . . 277 
What the new system cost . 278 
Its literature .... 278 
A formidable letter-writer . . 278 
Forebodings of a storm . . 279 
Authorship of Letters in the 

Public Advertiser . . . 279 
Writers wanted by the Minis- 
try 279 

Goldsmith refuses his sup- 
port . . . . . 279 
Consequences of refusal . . 279 
Smollett and Lord Shelbume . 280 
Gray and Lord Bute . .280 
Hopes for a writer of genius . 280 
Death of the author of Hum- 
phrey CLiriker . . . . 280 



CHAPTER XIX. 

1767. 

CLOSE OF A TWELVE YEARS' STRUGGLE. 

PAGE 

1767. Reflections for a garret . . 280 
Mt. 39. What is done and what might 

have been done . . . 281 
Scar of a twelve years' conflict. 281 
What poverty brings with it . 281 
Its benefits and its evils . . 282 
Contrasts in all men . . . 282 
Social disadvantages . . 283 
The habit of disrespect . . 283 
An innocent vanity . . . 283 
Doctor Minor and Doctor 

Major 284 



Hashed-up stories 

Beattie's guinea and Gold- 
smith's sixpences . . . 

Burke's noble advice 

Labour and leisure ill-appor- 
tioned 

Irish temperament . 

A battle well fought out . . 

Want of a home 

An unfailing friend . . . 

The rus in urbe of Goldsmith 
and Gray .... 286 

The Temple Gardens . . . 287 



. 284 

284 
285 

285 
286 
286 
286 
286 



Book IV. 1767 to 1774. 



THE FRIEND OF JOHNSON, BURKE, AND REYNOLDS ; DRAMATIST, NOVELIST, 

and poet. Pages 289 to 472. 



CHAPTER I. 

1767-1768. 

"the good-natured man." 

1767. (Dec. 22nd) Death of John New- 
Mt. 39. bery 291 



1768. 
Mt. 40. 



(Jan. 28th) Promised per- 
formance of the Good- 
Natured Man . . . 291 
Quarrels in the theatre . . 291 
Bickerstaff's complaint . . 292 
The comedy in rehearsal . . 292 
Hugh Kelly's rival comedy . 292 
False Delicacy . . . .293 
A saving of wit and trouble . 294 
Garrick's zeal for Kelly . . 294 
A blaze of triumph . . . 294 
Last rehearsal of the Good- 

Natured Man . . . 294 
Doleful anticipations . . . 295 
(29th Jan.) Goldsmith on the 

stage .... 295 

Powell's acting in Honeywood 295 
Reception of the Bailiffs . . 295 
Shuter's acting in Croaker . 296 
At supper after the comedy . 296 
Goldsmith singing and crying 296 



Johnson's sympathy . . 297 
Publication of the Good-Ma- 
tured Man . . . . 297 
High critics of low humour . 298 
" Our little Bard " . . . 298 

Goldy 298 

Stage-career of the comedy . 298 



CHAPTER II. 



SOCIAL ENTERTAINMENTS, HUMBLE CLIENTS, 
AND SHOEMAKER'S HOLIDAYS. 

1768. Results of theatrical success . 299 
Mt. 40. Chambers in Brick-court . . 299 
Poet Goldsmith and Lawyer 

Blackstone . . .299 

Dancing a minuet . . . 300 
" A cheerful little hop " . 300 

The Wednesday Club . . . 301 
Putting a pig in the right way 301 
Practical jokes . . .301 

Hugh Kelly and his wife's 

sister 302 

Goldsmith proposes . . 302 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Throwing stones from glass 

houses 302 

Tyrian bloom and garter blue 303 
(May) Henry Goldsmith's 

death 303 

The Village Preacher . . . 303 
Idea of the Deserted Village . 304 
Unsettled opinions . . . 304 
Sentimental politics . . 305 

Depopulation in England and 

Ireland 305 

Conversation Cooke . .. . 305 
A Shoemaker's Holiday . . 306 
Peter Barlow . . . .307 
Poor pensioners . . . 307 

Singing Sally Salisbury . . 308 
Mr. Cooke and Mr. Rogers . 308 



CHAPTER III. 

1768. 

THE EDGEWARE COTTAGE, ST. STEPHEN'S, 
AND GRUB STREET. 

1768. The Shoemaker's Paradise . 309 
iEt. 40. Lawyer Bott . . . . 309 
Walpole, Hume, and Robertson 310 
Death of Laurence Sterne . 310 
Royal Academy founded . .311 
Goldsmith Professor of History 311 
Riots in St. George's and St. 

James's .... 311 
An Austrian ambassador head- 
over-heels . . . * 312 
Lord Chatham re-awakening . 312 
Burke's purchase of Beacons- 

fieli 313 

(Oct.) Goldsmith at the theatre 313 
Epigram against Goldsmith . 314 
Paul Hiffernan . . .314 

Goldsmith at the reading of a 

play 315 

Isaac Bickerstaff . . .315 
Infamy and misery . . .315 
An Ishmael of criticism . . 315 
Setting reviewers at defiance . 31 6 
The Gentleman's Journal . . 316 
A visit from Grub-street . . 316 
The screw of tea and sugar . 316 
General Oglethorpe . . . 317 
Jacobite leanings . . .317 
In Poets'-corner and at Temple- 
bar 317 



CHAPTER IV. 

1769. 

LABOURS AND ENJOYMENTS PUBLIC AND 
PRIVATE. 

1769. Degree at Oxford . . .318 
iEt. 41. The Great Bear . . . . 31S 
Boys of the Newcastle Gram- 
mar school . . . 319 
New members elected to the 

club 319 

Goldsmith and Johnson dis- 
agree . . . .319 
The club's gradual decline . 320 



PAGE 

Mrs. Lennox's comedy . . 320 
Goldsmith's epilogue . . 320 
Vers de Societi . . . . 320 
Mrs. Horneck and her daugh- 
ters 321 

Little Comedy and the Captain 

in Lace .... 321 

Mr. Washington Irving and the 

Jessamy Bride . .. 322 

Burke's guardianship . . . 322 
"This is a poem" . . .322 
Reynolds and Angelica Kauff- 

man 323 

(May) The Roman History . 324 
Dinner talk at Beauclerc's . . 324 
First agreement for the A nimated 

Nature . . . .324 
A History of Ewiland proposed 325 
Money advanced to the his- 
torian 325 

What the historian did with it 325 
Goldsmith and the Vandyke . 325 
Payments anticipated . . 326 

Goldsmith on party . . 327 

Gray absorbed in a newspaper 327 
First Letter with the signature 

of "Junius" . . . 327 

Burke trying to be heai-d . 328 
The right to report debates . 328 
Sir Henry Cavendish's Notes . 328 



CHAPTER V. 

1769-1770. 

LONDON LIFE. 

1769. Mrs. Macauley's statue . . 328 
2Et. 41. Madame Dubarry's portrait . 328 
Vanity Fair . . . . 329 
The Stratford Jubilee . . 329 
Boswell and Paoli . . . 329 
The Auld Dominie . . 329 
Baretti and Goldsmith . . 330 
Baretti's bail and witnesses . 330 
Mr. William Filby's bills . . 330 
Boswell's dinner-party . . 331 
Waiting for Reynolds . . . 331 
The bloom-coloured coat . . 331 
How to treat a host . . . 333 
At work on a Life of Parnell . 333 
The Deserted Village announced 333 
Uncle Ccntarine's legacy . . 334 
Irish friends and family . . 334 
Le tter to brother Maurice . 334 
Surrenders his legacy . . . 335 
Sends his picture . . . 335 
Maurice becomes a cabinet- 
maker 335 

Nephew Hodson comes to Lon- 
don 336 



CHAPTER VI. 

1770. 

DINNERS AND TALK. 

1770. Goldsmith painted by Reynolds 336 

iEt. 42. Print in the shop-windows . 336 

Goldsmith and Sir Joshua . . 337 

The nonsense of a man of wit 337 



1770. 
Mt. 4! 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



The dinners in Leicester-square 338 
Formidable guests . . . 338 
Invulnerability of the host . 338 
A joke without its point . . 339 
A story not laughed at . . 340 
Petty annoyances . . . 340 
Johnson's practical wisdom . 340 
Exaggeration of foibles . . 340 
The Muses and the Players . 341 
Talking and writing . . 341 
Burke's trick upon Goldsmith 341 
The Irish widow .... 342 
Celebrated talkers . . .342 
An old lady's advice . . . 342 
Goldsmith's conversation . 343 
Little fishes talking like whales 344 
Goldsmith reads the Heroic 

EpistU to Johnson . . 344 

The he-bear and the she-bear . 345 
Johnson'spamphlet against the 

Opposition . . . 345 
Tommy Townshend's attack . 345 
Burke in the House of Com- 
mons 345 

Unpunished libels . . . 346 
Supremacy of Junius . . . 346 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE "DESERTED VILLAGE." 

(26th May) Publication of the 

Deserted Village . . 346 

What Gray thought of it . 346 

Burke's opinion . . . . 347 
Secret of the life of books . . 347 
Johnson's and Goethe's opinion 348 
Sentiment of the Deserted 

Village . . . .348 
The giant of Giant-castle . . 348 
Writing from the heart . . 348 
Longing for home . . . 34S 
The village ale-house . . 349 
Sympathy with the very poor . 350 
Republican principles . . . 350 
Johnson's masterpiece . . 350 
Without and within . . . 351 
Auburn and Lissoy . . 351 

Irish evictions . ... 351 
Supposed sites of the poem . 351 
The got-up Auburn . . . 351 
Dedication to Reynolds . . 352 
Payment for the poem . . 352 
Farewell to poetry . . . 353 
Alarm of the critics . . 353 

(May) Chatterton in London . 353 
London experiences . . . 353 
The disorders caused by hunger 354 
A three months' struggle . 354 
Last act of a tragedy . . . 354 



CHAPTER VIII. 

1770. 

A VISIT TO PARIS. 

f70. (July) Goldsmith and the Hor- 
i. 42. necks at Calais . . . 355 



PAGE 

Letter to Reynolds . . 355 

Fourteen porters for two trunks 355 
The poet's wig .... 355 

At Lisle 357 

At Paris . . . .357 

Travelling at twenty and at 

forty 357 

Another letter to Reynolds . 357 
Thinking of another comedy . 358 
His good things not understood 358 
Outrunning the constable . 358 
Looking like a fool in a silk coat 858 
A leap at Versailles . . . 358 
English and French parrots . 359 
Death of Goldsmith's mother . 359 
Half-mourning . . . 359 



CHAPTER IX 

1770-1771. 



HAUNCH OF VENISON ' 
OF CHESS." 



AND GAME 



1770. Abridgment of Roman History 


359 


.Et. 42. Life of Parnell 


359 


Adjective and substantive 


360 


Life of Bolingbroke 


360 


Johnsonian writing . 


360 


Attack of the Monthly Review . 


360 


1771. At Lord Clare's . 


361 


i£t. 43. At breakfast with a duchess by 




mistake .... 


362 


Squire Gawkey . . . . 


362 


Lord Clare's daughter and hei 




playfellow .... 
Lord Camden and Goldsmith . 


362 


362 


A present to Goldsmith from 




Lord Clare .... 


363 


A present to Lord Clare from 




Goldsmith . . . 


363 


The Haunch of Venison . 


363 


Poor poet-pensioners . . . 


364 


Boileau's third satire 


364 


Parson Scott and Barre* . . 


365 


Catastrophe of the oven . 


366 


A newly discovered poem . . 


366 


Vida's Game of Chess . 


366 


The favourite of Leo . . . 


367 


Goldsmith's knowledge of chess 367 


Translation by Goldsmith 


368 


The elephants and the archers 


368 


Divine machinery 


369 


Vicissitudes of the fight . . 


369 


Encounter of the queens . 


370 


Struggle of the kings . . . 


371 


New fact in Goldsmith's life . 


371 


CHAPTER X. 




1771. 




A ROUND OF PLEASURES. 




1771 . Horace Walpole . . . . 


371 


Mt. 43. First Royal Academy dinner . 


372 


What Academies cannot do 


372 


What Academies can do . 


372 


Conversation at the Academy 




dinner 


373 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Guldsrnith and Rowley . .374 
Walpole and Chatterton . . 374 
Percy and Goldsmith . .374 
Goldsmith and Henry Grattan 375 
Judge Day describes Gold 

smith 375 

Bunbury's caricatures . . 375 

A laugh 375 

At the Grecian coffee-house . 376 
At Ranelagh and Vauxhall . 376 
A challenge . . . .376 
Kenrick the libeller . . . 376 
At the Chapter coffee-house . 376 
At the masquerade . . . 377 
The poet and the president . 377 
Charles Fox and the macca- 

ronis 377 

Disadvantages of a mask . . 378 
The poet doing penance . . 378 
Goldsmith at cards . . 378 
Charles Fox at hazard . .379 
Thoughtless indulgence . .379 
At work on another comedy . 379 
The rise of Richard Cumber- 
land 380 

First comedy at Covent Garden 3S0 
The original Sir Fretful . . 3S0 
Pleasant persiflage . . . 3S0 
Grateful for being laughed at . 380 
At Hyde Farm . . . . 381 
"Writing the Animated Nature . 381 
BoswelTs visit with William 

Julius Mickle . . . 381 
Natural history experiences . 3S2 
Among the country fairs . . 382 
Wonderful matters . . . 382 



CHAPTER XL 

1771. 

COUNTRY LABOURS AND RELAXATIONS. 

1 771. (August). The English History 
iEt. 43. published . . . .384 
Party warnings and imputa- 
tions 384 

Tom Davies reviews his own 

publication . . . 3S4 

Goldsmith's farm-house at 

Hyde 385 

Recollections of his habits there 3S5 
Strolling players at Hendon . 3^-5 
" The Gentleman " . . . 3,->5 
Letter to Bennet Langton . . 3S5 
Little Comedy married . . 386 
Civilities and help from Garrick 3S6 
" Dr. Goldsmith's ridic\Uosity " 3S6 
Sports at Mrs. Bunbury's . 3S7 
A Christmas party . . . 3S7 
Letter to Mrs. Bunbury . . 387 
A spring velvet coat in winter 3S8 
At a round game with Little 
Comedy and the Jessamy 

Bride 3S8 

" The Doctor is loo'd" . . 3S9 
Handsome culprits . . 389 

A solemn -faced, odd-looking 
prosecutor . .339 



CHAPTER XII 
1772. 

FAME ACQUIRED AND TASK-WORK RESUMED. 

PA6E 

1772. A desperate game . . . 390 
i£t. 44. Goldsmith in the Temple-gar- 
dens 390 

An Irish client . . . . 390 
Nothing for nothing in London 390 
A description of China . . 391 
Little Cradock .... 391 
Prologue for Zobeide . . 392 

"She Threnodia Augustalis . . 392 
Rehearsal of the parts . . 392 
A surprise for Boswell . . 393 
Johnson put to the question . 393 
Horrible shocks for Boswell . 393 
Tigers as cats, and cats as 

tigers 393 

Colly Cibber and Dryden . . 394 
Disagreements and friendship 394 
An illustration from Blue 

Beard 395 

Goldsmith and Sappho . . 395 
"Oh, dear good man !" . . 395 
Dean Barnard's verses . . 395 

At work on the Animated 

Nature . . . .396 
Bits of natural painting . . 397 
Obligations to the Goose . 398 
Failure in a new novel . . 399 
Abridgment of the Roman His- 
tory 399 

Trial of an amanuensis . . 399 
Gibbon and Goldsmith . . 400 
Johnson's blame and praise . 400 
Household words . . . . 400 
New Essays .... 400 



CHAPTER XIII. 

1772. 

PUPPETS AT DRURT-LANE AND ELSEWHERE. 



1772. 

Mi. 44. 



Attack on sentimental comedy 401 
The new venture . . .401 
Libellers of Garrick . . . 401 
French airs .... 402 
Garrick's greatest mistake . 402 
Hamlet with Alterations . . 402 
George Steevens's joke . . 402 
Cock-a-doodle-doo ! . . . 403 
Burke in Paris . . . 403 
Goldsmith at the puppet-show 403 
Thomas Paine . ... 404 
At the theatre with Johnson . 404 
Northcote at Reynolds's . . 404 
Goldsmith and Bui rv . . . 405 
Disputing with Burke . . 405 
Criticism of Otway and Shake- 
speare 405 

A dead set at Cumberland . 406 
Proposing to play Scrub . . 406 
Cultivating his brogue . . 406 
Dining club at the St. James's 

Coffec-houso . . . 406 
Goldsmith's " Little Cornelys" 407 
At Shelburne House . . . 407 
At Mrs. Vesey's and Mrs. Mon- 
tagu's . . . .407 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGK 

Jack's in Dean-street . . . 407 

A question for a philosopher . 408 

At a chop-house with Cooke . 408 

Fears about his comedy . . 408 

Goldsmith trying a speech . . 408 



CHAPTER XIV. 

1772-1773. 

"she stoops to conquer." 

1772. Varieties of enjoyment in 
Et. 44. comedies . . . .409 
Fine gentlemen critics . . 410 
Young Marlow .... 410 
Tony Lumpkin . . . . 411 
Goldsmith and Sheridan . . 411 
Goldsmith and Lord Clare's 

daughter . . . . 411 
George Colman's misgivings . 411 
1773 (January) Letter to Colman . 412 
Et. 45. The comedy sent to Garrick . 412 
Again withdrawn . . . 412 

Johnson's anticipations . . 413 
Foote's Piety in Pattens . . 413 
Garrick's conversion . . 413 
Objections of the actors to their 

parts 414 

Theatrical criticism . . . 414 
A Harlequin for Young Marlow 414 
414 
414 
415 
415 
415 



Company at the rehearsals 
Five epilogues .... 
Letter to Oradock . . , 
A history of stage adventures 
A name for the comedy . 
Value of Horace Walpole's judg- 
ments 415 

The first night arrived . . 416 
Johnson and George Steevens . 416 
(15th March) Dinner before 

the performance . .416 
Cumberland's account of it . . 416 
In the theatre .... 417 
Signals for applause . . . 417 
How the comedy was received 417 
Goldsmith during the perform- 
ance 417 

Gratitude to the actors . . 418 
Colman's amende . . . 419 
Northcote in the gallery . . 419 
Stage career of She Stoops to 

Conquer .... 419 
Dedication to Johnson . . 419 



CHAPTER XV. 

1773. 

THE SHADOW AND THE SUNSHINE. 

1773. Libel in the London Packet . 420 
Mt. 45. Swift's sign of a genius . . 420 
The uses of a libeller . . . 420 
Insult to the Jessamy Bride . 421 
Goldsmith's visit to the pub- 
lisher. 421 

Goldsmith sent home in a coach 421 
Address to the public . . . 422 
A foolish thing well done . . 422 
Visit from Boswell . . . 422 
A dinner with Johnson . . 423 



PAGE 

Sings Tony Lumpkin's song . 423 
Talk at Paoli's . . . . 423 

The man Sterne . . .423 
Prefaces and dedications . . 423 
An argument with Johnson . 423 
Reasoning wrong at first 

thinking . . . . 423 

The king and the comedy . 425 
Rebellions and revolutions . . 425 
Paoli's compliment to Gold- 
smith.. . . . .425 

Goldsmith's attack on the Mar- 
riage Act . . . 425 
Talk at Thrale's . . .426 
Vanity of Garrick . . . 427 
The profession of an actor . 427 
Lawyers and players ; . 427 
Davy and Sam . . . . 427 

Caricature of Johnson . . 428 
Knowledge of acting . . . 428 
Credulity of Goldsmith . . 428 
Marvels in the Animated 
Nature 428 



CHAPTER XVI. 

1773. 

THE CLUB. 

1773. At work on a Grecian History . 429 
2Et. 45. Disputes with the booksellers . 429 
Changes in the club and new 

members .... 429 
Boswell proposed . . . 430 

What Reynolds and Malone 

thought of him . . . 430 
Boswell elected . . . . 431 
First appearance at the club . 431 
Johnson's charge . . .432 
A specimen of club talk . . 432 
Dinner at Dilly's . . .433 
Goldsmith's love of nature . . 433 
A dispute with Johnson . . 433 
Goldsmith hat in hand . . 434 
Johnson's rude attack . . 435 
The epilogue for Lee Lewes . 435 
Goldy's forgiveness . . . 435 
Meddling of Boswell . . . 435 
Envy not concealed . . . 436 
Bozzy's retort . . . . 436 
Goldsmith suggested as John- 
son's biographer . . 437 
Random sallies . . . . 437 
Talking laxly and feeling kindly 437 
To be remembered when Bos- 
well is read .... 438 



CHAPTER XVII. 

1773. 

DRUDGERY AND DEPRESSION. 

1773. The Grecian History . . . 439 
Mt. 45. Plan for a Dictionary of Arts 

and Sciences . . . 439 
Introduction written . . . 439 
A peep into his chambers . 439 
The occasional man-servant . 440 
Percy proposed as his biogra- 
pher 440 

Spirits and health broken . . 440 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Cumberland's visit to the Tem- 
ple 440 

Signs of depression . . . 441 
A trouble during whist . . 441 
A pension applied for . . . 441 
Popularity of Beattie with the 

great 442 

Why Goldsmith should not be 

popular with the great . 442 
Goldsmith's only dispute with 

Eeynolds . . . . 443 
The ale-house in Gerrard-street 443 
Reynolds rebuked . . . 443 
Beattie pensioned . . . 443 
Depending on moonshine . 444 

Malagrida 444 

False emphasis in life . . . 445 
Discontents with Covent- 

garden .... 445 
Desertion by the booksellers . 446 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

1773. 

THE CLOUDS STILL GATHERING. 

1773. Failure of the Dictionary pro- 

Mt. 45. ject 446 

Goldsmith's letter to Garrick . 447 
Proposed alteration of the 

Good-Natured Man rejected 447 
More " parlaver " to Garrick .447 
A gleam of sunshine . ' 448 
Goldsmith and Sir Joshua at 

Vauxhall . . . .448 
Kelly's fourth comedy . . 449 

Goldsmith and Walpole at 

Beauclerc's . . . 450 

Horace playing off a butt . . 450 
A game of Mufti . . . 450 
Goldsmith and Garrick . . 450 
Almost killed with envy . . 451 
Approach of a more serious 

malady 451 



CHAPTER XIX. 

1773-1774. 
"retaliation." 

1773. The last dinner-parties . . 452 
iEt. 45. Satirical epitaphs proposed . 453 

Cumberland's and Garrick's . 453 
Goldsmith produces his . . 453 
Two sets of jeux d'esprit . . 453 

1774. Garrick's account of the matter 453 
iEt. 46. Cumberland's account . . 454 

Confusion of facts and incidents 454 
Account in an original letter . 455 
Goldsmith recites Cumber- 
land's verses . . . . 455 
Goldsmith's line's on Garrick . 455 
Burke and Mrs. Cholmondeley 456 
Burke's Epitaph . . . 457 
Reynolds's Epitaph . . . 457 



Goldsmith's last unfinished 

verse 457 

Final drudgery . ... 457 
His friends neglecting him . 458 
Proposing to leave London . 458 
Approach of his last visitor . 458 



CHAPTER XX. 

1774. 

ILLNESS AND DEATH. 

1774 (Feb. 25) Illness .... 459 

Mt. 46. Hawes called in 459 

Doctor Fordyce sent for . . . 459 

Goldsmith persists in taking 

the fever-powders . . 460 

Results 460 

Evidence of the servants . . 460 
Doctor Turton summoned . . 461 ■ 
Goldsmith's last words . . 461 
(4th April) Death . . . 461 
Grief of Burke, Sir Joshua, and 

Johnson .... 462 
Mourners of various kinds . . 462 
Little Comedy and the Jes- 

samy Bride . . .462 
Arrival and departure of Mau- 
rice Goldsmith . ... 463 
The funeral ... .463 
No record of the grave . . 463 
Round-robin to Johnson . . 463 
Johnson's epitaph . . . 465 
Attempted in English . . . 465 
Tablet in the Temple . . 465 



CHAPTER XXI. 

1774. 

THE REWARDS OF GENIUS. 

1774. Cases of disputed copyright . 466 
Property in wit . . . . 466 
Opinions of the Judges . . 467 
Lord Mansfield and Lord Cam- 
den 467 

Opinion of Justice Willes .467 
Lord Chatham's opinion . . 468 
Results of Goldsmith's genius 468 
Account between a writer and 

his readers . . . 469 
Intention of this book . . . 469 
Claims of men of letters . . 469 
What English parliaments re- 
ward 470 

An author's right to the fruits 

of his labour . . . 470 
Birds fouling their own nest . 471 
The last Copyright Act . . 471 
Less protection in England 

than anywhere . . . 471 
The true remedy for literary 

. 472 



THE AUTHOR TO THE EEADEE. 



"It seems rational to hope," says Johnson in the Life of 
Savage, "that minds qualified for great attainments should first 
' endeavour their own benefit ; and that they who are most 
\ able to teach others the way to happiness, should with most 
' certainty follow it themselves : but this expectation, however 
'plausible, has been very frequently disappointed." Perhaps 
lot so frequently as the earnest biographer imagined. Much 
iepends on what we look to for our benefit, much on what we 
"ollow as the way to happiness. It may not be for the one, 
ind may have led us far out of the way of the other, that we 
lad acted on the world's estimate of wordly success, and to 
;hat directed our endeavour. So might we ourselves have 
)locked up the path, which it was our hope to have pointed 
>ut to others ; and in the straits of a selfish profit, made 
vreck of great attainments. 

Oliver Goldsmith, whose life and adventures should be 
mown to all who know his writings, must be held to have 
ucceeded in nothing that his friends would have had him 
; ucceed in. He was intended for a clergyman, and was re- 
ected when he applied for orders ; he practised as a physician, 
I nd never made what would have paid for a degree ; what he 
i ras not asked or expected to do, was to write, but he wrote 



2 THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. 

and paid the penalty. His existence was a continued privation. 
The days were few, in which he had resources for the night, or 
dared to look forward to the morrow. There was not any 
miserable want, in the long and sordid catalogue, which in its 
turn and in all its bitterness he did not feel. He had shared 
the experience of those to whom he makes affecting reference 
in his Animated Nature, " people who die really of hunger, in 
" common language of a broken heart ; " and when he succeeded 
at the last, success was but a feeble sunshine on a rapidly 
approaching decay, which was to lead him, by its nickering and 
uncertain light, to an early grave. 

Self-benefit seems out of the question here, and the way to 
happiness is indeed distant from this. But if we look a little 
closer, we shall see that he has passed through it all with a 
child-like purity of heart unsullied. Much of the misery 
vanishes when that is known ; and when it is remembered, too, 
that in spite of it the Vicar of Wakefield was written, nay that 
without it, in all human probability, a book so delightful and 
wise could not have been written. Fifty-six years after its 
author's death, the greatest of Germans recounted to a friend 
how much he had been indebted to the celebrated Irishman. 
' It is not to be described," wrote Goethe to Zelter, in 1830, 
1 the effect that Goldsmith's Vicar had upon me, just at the 
"critical moment of mental development. That lofty and 
" benevolent irony, that fair and indulgent view of all infirmities 
" and faults, that meekness under aU calamities, that equanimity 
" under all changes and chances, and the whole train of kindred 
" virtues, whatever names they bear, proved my best education ; 
" and in the end," he added with sound philosophy, " these are 
"the thoughts and feelings which have reclaimed us from all 
"the errors of life." 

And why were they so enforced in that charming book, but 
because the writer had undergone them all ; because they had 
reclaimed himself, not from the world's errors only, but also 



THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. 3 

from its suffering and care ; and because his own life and 
adventures had been the same chequered and beautiful romance 
of the triumph of good over evil. 

Though what is called worldly success, then, was not 
attained by Goldsmith, it may be that the way to happiness 
was yet not missed altogether. The sincere and sad biographer 
of Savage might have profited by the example. His own 
benefit he had not successfully " endeavoured," when the 
gloom of his early life embittered life to the last, and the 
trouble he had endured was made excuse for a sorrowful 
philosophy, and for manners that were an outrage to the 
kindness of his heart. "What had fallen to Johnson's lot, fell 
not less heavily to Goldsmith's.^ Of the calamities to which 
the literary life was then exposed, 

" Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol," 

none were spared to the subject of these pages. But they 
found, and left him, gentle and unspoiled : and though the 
discipline that thus taught him charity entailed some social 
disadvantage, by unfeigned sincerity and simplicity of heart he 
diffused every social enjoyment. "When his conduct least agreed 
with his writings, these characteristics did not fail him. "What 
he gained, was gain to others ; what he lost, concerned only 
himself; he suffered pain, but never inflicted it ; and it is 
amazing to think how small an amount of mere insensibility to 
other people's opinions would have exalted Doctor Goldsmith's 
position in the literary circles of his day. He lost caste because 
he could not acquire it, and could as little assume the habit of 
indifference, as trade upon the gravity of the repute he had won. 
" Admirers in a room," said Northcote, repeating what had been 
told him by Reynolds, " whom his entrance had struck with awe, 
"might be seen riding out upon his back." It was hard, he said 
himself to Sir Joshua, that fame and its dignities should 
intercept people's liking and fondness ; and for his love of the 

B 2 



4 THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. 

latter, no doubt he forfeited not a little of the former. " He is 
"an inspired idiot," cried "Walpole. " He does not know the 
" difference of a turkey from a goose," said Cumberland. " Sir," 
shouted Johnson, " he knows nothing, he has made up his mind 
" about nothing." Few cared to think or speak of him but as 
little Goldy, honest Goldy ; and every one laughed at him for 
the oddity of his blunders, and the awkwardness of his 
manners. 

But I invite the reader to his life and adventures, and the 
times in which they were cast. Iso uninstructive explanation 
of all this may possibly await us there, if together we review 
the scene, and move among its actors as they play their parts. 




THE SIZAR, STUDENT, TRAVELLER, 

APOTHECARY'S JOURNEYMAN, 

USHER, AND POOR PHYSICIAN. 




BOOK THE FIRST. 



CHAPTER I. 



SCHOOL DAYS AND HOLIDAYS. 1728—1745. 

The marble in Westminster Abbey is correct in the place, but not 
in the time, of the birth of Oliver Goldsmith. He was 
born at a small old parsonage house (supposed afterwards to 
be haunted by the fairies, or good people of the district, who could 
not however save it from being levelled to the ground) in a lonely, 
remote, and almost inaccessible Irish village on the southern banks 
of the river Inny, called Pallas, or Pallasmore, the property of the 
Edgeworths of Edgeworthstown, in the county of Longford, on the 
10th of November, 1728 : a little more than three years earlier 
than the date upon his epitaph. His father, the reverend Charles 
Goldsmith, descended from a family which had long been settled 
in Ireland, and held various offices or dignities in connexion with 
the established church, was a protestant clergyman with an un- 
certain stipend, which, with the help of some fields he farmed, and 
occasional duties performed for the rector of the adjoining parish 
of Kilkenny West (the reverend Mr. Green) who was uncle to his 
wife, averaged forty pounds a year. In May, 1718, he had 
married Anne, the daughter of the reverend Oliver Jones, who 
was master of the school at Elphin, to which he had gone in boy- 
hood ; and before 1728 four children had been the issue of the 
marriage. A new birth was but a new burthen ; and little dreamt 
the humble village preacher, then or ever, that from the date of 
that tenth of November on which his Oliver was born, his own 
virtues and very foibles were to be a legacy of pleasure to many 
generations of men. For they who have loved, laughed, or wept, 
with the father of the man in black in the Citizen of the World, 



8 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i. 

the preacher of the Deserted Village, or the hero of the Vicar of 
Wakefield, have given laughter, love, and tears, to the reverend 
Charles Goldsmith. 

The death of the rector of Kilkenny West improved his fortunes. 

He succeeded in 1730 to this living of his wife's uncle ; 
J, o his income of forty pounds was raised to nearly two hundred ; 

and Oliver had not completed his second year when the 
family moved from Pallasmore to a respectable house and farm on 
the verge of the pretty little village of Lissoy, "in the county of 
"Westmeath, barony of Kilkenny West," some six miles from 
Pallasmore, and about midway between the towns of Ballymahon 
and Athlone. The first-born, Margaret (22nd August, 1719), 
appears to have died in childhood ; and the family, at this time 
consisting of Catherine (13th January, 1721), Henry (9th Febru- 
ary, 17 — ), Jane (9th February, 17 — ), and Oliver, born at 
Pallasmore, was in the next ten years increased by Maurice (7th 

July, 1736), Charles (16th August, 1737), and John 23rd , 

1740), born at Lissoy. The leaf of the family bible recording 
these dates is unfortunately so torn that the precise year of the 
births of Henry and Jane, like that of Oliver's birth, is not 
discernible from it ; but it seems quite decisive, from the fact of 
the same day specified in both cases, coupled with the distinct 
assurance of Mrs. Hodson that there was a childless interval of 
seven years before the birth of Oliver, that Henry and Jane were 
twins, and both born in 1722. The youngest, as the eldest, died 
in youth ; Charles went in his twentieth year, a friendless adventurer, 
to Jamaica, and after long self-exile died, little less than half a 
century since (1803 — 4), in a poor lodging in Somers' Town ; 
Maurice was put to the trade of a cabinet-maker, kept a meagre 
shop in Charlestown in the county of Roscommon, and " departed 
"from a miserable life" in 1792 ; Henry followed his father's 
calling, and died as he had lived, a humble village preacher and 
schoolmaster, in 1768 ; Catherine married a wealthy husband, 
Mr. Hodson, Jane a poor one, Mr. Johnston, and both died in 
Athlone, some years after the death of that celebrated brother to 
whose life and times these pages are devoted. 

A trusted dependant in Charles Goldsmith's house, a young 

woman related to the family, afterwards known as Elizabeth 
ig, g Delap and schoolmistress of Lissoy, first put a book into 

Oliver Goldsmith's hands. She taught him his letters ; lived 
till it was matter of pride to remember ; often talked of it to Doctor 
Strean, Henry Goldsmith's successor in the curacy of Kilkenny 
West ; and at the ripe age of ninety, when the great writer had 
been thirteen years in his grave, boasted of it with her last breath. 
That her success in the task had not been much to boast of, she at 




chap, i.] SCHOOL DAYS AND HOLIDAYS. 9 

other times confessed. " Never was so dull a boy : he seemed 
"impenetrably stupid," said the good Elizabeth Delap, when she 
bored her friends, or answered curious enquirers, about the cele- 
brated Doctor Goldsmith. " He was a plant that flowered late," 
said Johnson to Boswell ; "there ap- 
peared nothing remarkable about him 
" when he was young." This, if true, 
would have been only another confir- 
mation of the saying that the richer a 
nature is, the harder and more slow 
its development is like to be ; but it 
may perhaps be doubted, in the mean- 
ing it would ordinarily bear, for all the 
charms of Goldsmith's later style are 
to be traced in even the letters of his 
youth, and his sister expressly tells" 
us that he not only began to scribble 
verses when he could scarcely write, 

but otherwise showed a fondness for books and learning, and what 
she calls "signs of genius." 

At the age of six, Oliver was handed over to the village school, 
kept by Mr. Thomas Byrne. Looking back from this dis- 
tance of time, and penetrating through greater obscurity -p. A 
than its own cabin-smoke into that Lissoy academy, it is to 
be discovered that this excellent Mr. Byrne, retired quarter-master 
of an Irish regiment that had served in Marlborough's Spanish wars, 
was more given to " shoulder a crutch and show how fields were 
"won," and certainly more apt to teach wild legends of an Irish 
hovel, and hold forth about fairies and rapparees, than to inculcate 
what are called the humanities. Little Oliver came away from 
him much as he went, in point of learning ; but there were certain 
wandering unsettled tastes, which his friends thought to have been 
here implanted in him, and which, as well as a taste for song, one 
of his later essays might seem to connect with the vagrant life of 
the blind harper Carolan, whose wayside melodies he had been 
taken to hear. Unhappily something more and other than this 
also remained, in the effects of a terrible disease which assailed him 
at the school, and were not likely soon to pass away. 

An attack of confluent small-pox which nearly proved mortal 
left deep and indelible traces on his face, for ever settled his 
small pretension to good-looks, and exposed him to jest and 
sarcasm. Kind-natured Mr. Byrne might best have reconciled 
him to it, used to his temper as no doubt he had- become ; and it 
was doubly unfortunate to be sent at such a time away from home, 
to a school among strangers, at once to taste the bitterness of those 

B3 



10 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book 

school experiences which too early and sadly teach the shy, ill- 
favoured, backward boy, what tyrannies in the large as in 
i+ 8 that little world the strong have to inflict, and what suffer- 
ings the weak must be prepared to endure. But to the 
reverend Mr. Griffin's superior school of Elphin, in Roscommon, it 
was resolved to send him ; and at the house of an uncle John, at 
Ballyoughter in the neighbourhood of Elphin, he was lodged and 
boarded. The knowledge of Ovid and Horace, introduced to him 
here, was the pleasantest as well as the least important, though it 
might be by far the most difficult, of what he had now to learn. 
It was the learning of bitter years, and not taught by the school- 
master, but by the school-fellows, of this poor little, thick, pale- 
faced, pock-marked boy. "He was considered by his contempo- 
' ' raries and school-fellows, with whom I have often conversed on 
"the subject," said Doctor Strean, who succeeded, on the death of 
Charles Goldsmith's curate and eldest son, to his pastoral duty and 
its munificent rewards, " as a stupid, heavy blockhead, little better 
"than a fool, whom every one made fun of." 

It was early to trample fun out of a child ; and he bore marks 
of it to his dying day. It had not been his least qualification as 
game for laughter, that all confessed his nature to be kind and 
affectionate, and knew his temper to be cheerful and agreeable ; 
but. feeling, as well as fun, he could hardly be expected to supply 
without intermission, and, precisely as in after years it was said of 
him that he had the most unaccountable alternations of gaiety and 
gloom, and was subject to the most particular humours, 
J. g even so his elder sister described his school-days to Doctor 
Percy, bishop of Dromore, when that divine and his friends 
were gathering materials for his biography. That he seemed to 
possess two natures, was the learned comment at once upon his 
childhood and his manhood. And there was sense in it ; in so far 
as it represented that continued struggle, happily always unavailing, 
carried on against feelings which God had given him, by fears and 
misgivings he had to thank the world for. 

" Why Noll !" exlaimed a visitor at uncle John's, "you are 
' ' become a fright ! When do you mean to get handsome 
" again ?" Oliver moved in silence to the window. The speaker, 
a thoughtless and notorious scapegrace of the Goldsmith family, 
repeated the question with a worse sneer : and " I mean to get 
"better, sir, when you do!" was the boy's retort, which has 
delighted his biographers for its quickness of repartee. It was 
probably something more than smartness. Another example of 
precocious wit occurred also at uncle John's, when his nephew 
was still a mere child. There was company, one day, to a little 
dance ; and the fiddler who happened to be engaged on the occa- 



chap, i.] SCHOOL DAYS AND HOLIDAYS. 11 

sion, being a fiddler who reckoned himself a wit, received suddenly 
an Oliver for his Rowland which he had not come prepared for. 
During a pause between two country dances, the party had been 
greatly surprised by little Noll quickly jumping up and dancing a 
pas seul impromptu about the room, whereupon, seizing the oppor- 
tunity of the lad's ungainly look and grotesque figure, the jocose 
fiddler promptly exclaimed JEsop ! A burst of laughter rewarded 
him, which however was rapidly turned the other way by Noll 
stopping his hornpipe, looking round at his assailant, and giving 
forth, in audible voice and without hesitation, the couplet which 
was thought worth preserving as the first formal eifort of his 
genius by Percy, Malone, Campbell, and the rest who compiled 
that biographical preface to the Miscellaneous Works on which the 
subsequent biographies have been founded, but who nevertheless 
appear to have missed the correct version of what they thought so 
clever. 

Heralds, proclaim aloud ! all saying, 

See JSsop dancing, and his Monkey playing. 

Yet these things may stand for more than quickness of repartee ; 
for it is even possible that the secret might be found in 
them, of much that has been too harshly condemned for tp + {q 
egregious vanity. Such a failing in Goldsmith, at any rate, 
had a source very different from that in which the ordinary forms of 
vanity have birth. Fielding describes a class of men who feed 
upon their own hearts ; who are egotists, as he says, the wrong 
way ; and if Goldsmith was vain, it was the wrong way. It arose, 
not from over-weening self-complacency in supposed advantages, 
but from what the world had forced him since his earliest youth to 
feel, intense uneasy consciousness of supposed defects. His re- 
sources of boyhood went as manhood came. There was no longer 
the cricket-match, the hornpipe, an active descent upon an orchard, 
or a game of fives or foot-ball, to purge unhealthy humours and 
"clear out the mind." There was no old dairy-maid, no Peggy 
Golden, to beguile childish sorrows, or, as he mournfully recalls in 
one of his delightful essays, to sing him into pleasant tears with 
Johnny Armstrong's Last Good Night, or the Cruelty of Barbara 
Allen. It was his ardent wish, as he grew to manhood, to be on 
good terms with the society around him ; and, finding it essential 
first of all to be on good terms with himself, he would have 
restored by fantastic dress and other innocent follies what his friends 
till then had done their best to banter him out of. It was to no 
purpose he made the attempt. So unwitting a contrast to gentle- 
ness, to simplicity, to an utter absence of disguise, in his real 
nature, could but make an absurdity the more. ' ' Why, what 



12 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i 

" wouldst thou have, dear Doctor ! " said Johnson, laughing at a 
squib in the St. James's Chronicle which had coupled himself and 
his friend as the pedant and his flatterer in Love's Labour's Lost, 
and at which poor Goldsmith was fretting and foaming ; " who the 
' ' plague is hurt with all this nonsense 1 and how is a man the 
' ' worse, I wonder, in his health, purse, or character, for being 
"called Holofernes?" "How you may relish being called 
" Holof ernes," replied Goldsmith, "I do not know ; but I do not 
"like at least to play Goodman Dull." Much against his will it 
was the part he was set down for from the first. 

But were there not still the means, at the fire-side of his good- 
hearted father, of turning these childish rebuffs to something of a 
wholesome discipline ? Alas ! little ; there was little of worldly 
wisdom in the home circle of the kind but simple preacher, to \ 
make a profit of this worldly experience. My father's education, 
says the man in black, and no one ever doubted who sat for the 
portrait, ' ' was above his fortune, and his generosity greater than 
"his education. . . . He told the story of the ivy-tree, and that was 
" laughed at ; he repeated the jest of the two scholars and one 
" pair of breeches, and the company laughed at that ; but the story 
" of Taffy in the sedan-chair was sure to set the table in a roar : 
' ' thus his pleasure increased in proportion to the pleasure he 
' ' gave ; he loved all the world, and he fancied all the world 
"loved him. . . . We were told that universal benevolence was 
" what first cemented society ; we were taught to consider all the 
" wants of mankind as our own ; to regard the human face divine 
" with affection and esteem ; he wound us up to be mere machines 
" of pity, and rendered us incapable of withstanding the slightest 
"impulse made either by real or fictitious distress : in a word, we 
" were perfectly instructed in the art of giving away thousands, 
" before we were taught the more necessary qualifications of getting 
"a farthing." 

Acquisitions highly primitive, and supporting what seems to have 
been the common fame of the Goldsmith race. " The Goldsmiths 
"were always a strange family," confessed three different branches 
of them, in as many different quarters of Ireland, when inquiries 
were made by a recent biographer of the poet. " They rarely 
' 1 acted like other people : their hearts were always in the right 
" place, but their heads seemed to be doing anything but what 
"they ought." In opinions or confessions of this kind, however, 
the heart's right place is perhaps not so well discriminated as it 
might be, or collision with the head would be oftener avoided. 
Worthy Doctor Strean expressed himself more correctly when 
Mr. Mangin was making his inquiries more than forty years ago. 
"Several of the family and name," he said, "live near Elphin, 



chap, i.] SCHOOL DAYS AND HOLIDAYS. 13 

" who, as well as the poet, were, and are, remarkable for their 
"worth, but of no cleverness in the common affairs of the world." 

If cleverness in the common affairs of the world is what the head- 
should be always versed in, to be meditating what it ought, poor 
Oliver was a grave defaulter. We are all of us, it is said, more or 
less related to chaos ; and with him, to the last, there was much 
that lay unredeemed from its void. Sturdy boys who work a 
gallant way through school, become the picked men of their 
colleges, grow up to thriving eminence in their several callings, 
and found respectable families, are seldom troubled with this re- 
lationship till chaos reclaims them altogether, and they die and are 
forgotten. All men have their advantages, and that is theirs. 
But it shows too great a pride in what they have, to think the 
whole world should be under pains and penalties to possess it too ; 
and to set up so many doleful lamentations over this poor, weak, 
confused, erratic, Goldsmith nature. Their tone will not be taken 
here, the writer having no pretension to its moral dignity. Con- 
sideration will be had for the harsh lessons this boy so early and 
bitterly encountered ; it will not be forgotten that feeling, not 
always rightly guided or controlled, but sometimes in a large 
excess, must almost of necessity be his who has it in charge to dis- 
pense largely, variously, and freely to others ; and in the endeavour 
to show that the heart, of Oliver Goldsmith was indeed rightly 
placed, it may perhaps appear that his head also profited by so 
good an example. , 

At the age of eleven he was removed from Mr. Griffin's, and put 

to a school of repute at Athlone, about five miles from his 

1739 
father's house, and kept by a reverend Mr. Campbell. At ™, ,4 

about the same time his brother Henry went as a pensioner 
to Dublin University, and it was resolved that in due course Oliver 
should follow him : a determination, his sister told Dr. Percy, which 
had replaced that of putting him to a common trade, on those evi- 
dences of a certain liveliness of talent which had broken out at 
uncle John's being discussed among his relatives and friends. He 
remained at Athlone two years ; and, when Mr. Campbell's ill- 
health obliged him to resign his charge, was removed to the 
school of Edgeworthstown, kept by the reverend Patrick m, -.'o 
Hughes. Here he stayed more than three years, and was 
long remembered by the school acquaintance he formed ; among 
whom were Mr. Beatty, Mr. Xugent, Mr. Roach, and 
Mr. Daly, to whom we are indebted for some traits of that™, -.V 
early time. They recollected Mr. Hughes's special kindness 
to him, and "thinking well" of him, as matters not then to be 
accounted for. The good master, it appeared, had been Charles 
Goldsmith's friend. They dwelt upon his ugliness and awkward 



14 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i. 

manners ; they professed to recount even the studies he liked or 
disliked (Ovid and Horace were welcome to him, he hated Cicero, 
Livy was his delight, and Tacitus opened him new sources of plea- 
sure) ; they described his temper as ultra-sensitive, but added that 
though quick to take offence, he was more feverishly ready to forgive. 
They also said, that though at first diffident and backward in the 
extreme, he mustered sufficient boldness in time to take even a 
leader's place in the boyish sports, and particularly at fives or ball- 
playing. Whenever an exploit was proposed or a trick was going 
forward, "Noll Goldsmith" was certain to be in it ; an actor or a 
victim. 

Of his holidays, Ballymahon was the central attraction ; and 
here too recollection was vivid and busy, as soon as his name 
grew famous. An old man who directed the sports of the place, 
and kept the ball-court in those days, long subsisted on his stories 
of " Master Noll." The narrative master-piece of this ancient 
Jack Fitzsimmons related to the depredation of the orchard of 
Tirlicken, by the youth and his companions. Fitzsimmons also 
vouched to the reverend John Graham for the entire truth of the 
adventure so currently and confidently told by his Irish acquaint- 
ance, which offers an agreeable relief to the excess of diffidence 
heretofore noted in him, and on which, if true, the leading incident 
of She Stoops to Conquer was founded. 

At the close of his last holidays, then a lad of nearly seventeen, 
he left home for Edgeworthstown, mounted on a borrowed 
ml i'q hack which a friend was to restore to Lissoy, and with 
store of unaccustomed wealth, a guinea, in his pocket. 
The delicious taste of independence beguiled him to a loitering, 
lingering, pleasant enjoyment of the journey ; and, instead of 
finding himself under Mr. Hughes's roof at nightfall, night fell 
upon him some two or three miles out of the direct road, in the 
middle of the streets of Ardagh. But nothing could disconcert 
the owner of the guinea, who, with a lofty, confident air, inquired of 
a person passing the way to the town's best house of entertainment. 
The man addressed was the wag of Ardagh, a humorous fencing- 
master, Mr. Cornelius Kelly, and the schoolboy swagger was 
irresistible provocation to a jest. Submissively he turned back 
with horse and rider till they came within a pace or two of the 
great Squire Featherston's, to which he respectfully pointed as 
the " best house " of Ardagh. Oliver rang at the gate, gave his 
beast in charge with authoritative rigour, and was shown, as a 
supposed expected guest, into the comfortable parlour of the 
squire. Those were days when Irish inn-keepers and Irish 
squires more nearly approximated than now ; and Mr. Feather- 
ston, unlike the excellent but explosive Mr. Hardcastle, is said to 



chap, ii.] COLLEGE. 15 

have seen the mistake and humoured it. Oliver had a supper 
which gave him so much satisfaction, that he ordered a bottle of 
wine to follow ; and the attentive landlord was not only forced to 
drink with him, but, with a like familiar condescension, the wife 
and pretty daughter were invited to the supper-room. Going to 
bed, he stopped to give special instructions for a hot cake to 
breakfast ; and it was not till he had dispatched this latter meal, 
and was looking at his guinea with pathetic aspect of farewell, 
that the truth was told him by the good-natured squire. The 
late Sir Thomas Featherston, grandson to the supposed inn-keeper, 
had faith in the adventure ; and told Mr. Graham that as his 
grandfather and Charles Goldsmith had been college acquaintance, 
it might the better be accounted for. 

It is certainly, if true, the earliest known instance of the dis- 
position to swagger with a grand air which afterwards displayed 
itself in other forms, and strutted about in clothes rather noted 
for fineness than fitness. 



CHAPTER II. 



COLLEGE. 1745—1749. 



But the school-days of Oliver Goldsmith are now to close. Within 
the last year there had been some changes at Lissoy, which 
not a little affected the family fortunes. Catherine, the elder ^] «Z 
sister, had privately married a Mr. Daniel Hodson, "the 
"son of a gentleman of good property, residing at St. John's, near 
" Athlone." The young man was at the time availing himself of 
Henry Goldsmith's services as private tutor ; Henry having 
obtained a scholarship two years before, and now assisting the family 
resources with such employment of his college distinction. The 
good Charles Goldsmith was greatly indignant at the marriage, and 
on reproaches from the elder Hodson ' ' made a sacrifice detrimental 
"to the interests of his family." He entered into a legal en- 
gagement, still registered in the Dublin Four Courts, and bearing 
date the 7th of September, 1744, " to pay to Daniel Hodson, Esq., 
" of St. John's, Roscommon, £400 as the marriage portion of his 
"daughter Catherine, then the wife of the said Daniel Hodson." 
But it could not be effected without sacrifice of his tithes and 
rented land ; and it was a sacrifice, as it seems to me, made in a 
spirit of very simple and very false pride. The writer who dis- 
covered this marriage settlement attributes it to " the highest sense 






16 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [i 



" of honour ;" but it must surely be doubted if an act which, to 
elevate the pretensions of one child, and adapt them to those of 
the man she had married, inflicted beggary on the rest, should be so 
referred to. Oliver was the first to taste its bitterness. It was 
announced to him that he could not go to college as Henry had 
gone, a pensioner ; but must consent to enter it, a sizar. 

The first thing exacted of a sizar, in those days, was to give 
proof of classical attainments. He was to show himself, to a 
certain reasonable extent, a good scholar ; in return for which, 
being clad in a black gown of coarse stuff without sleeves, he was 
marked with the servant's badge of a red cap, and put to the 
servant's offices of sweeping courts in the morning, carrying up 
dishes from the kitchen to the fellows' dining-table in the after- 
noon, and waiting in the hall till the fellows had dined. This, for 
which commons, teaching, and chambers, were on the other hand 
greatly reduced, is called by one of Goldsmith's biographers " one of 
" those judicious and considerate arrangements of the founders of 
" such institutions, that gives to the less opulent the opportunity of 
"cultivating learning at a trifling expense ;" but it is called by 
Goldsmith himself, in his Enquiry into the Present State of 
Polite Learning (and Johnson himself condemns the practice not 
less severely, though as pompously Sir John Hawkins supports 
it), a "contradiction" suggested by motives of pride, and a pas- 
sion which he thinks absurd, ' ' that men should be at once 
' ' learning the liberal arts, and at the same time treated as slaves ; 
"at once studying freedom and practising servitude." 

To this contradiction- he is now himself doomed ; and that which 
to a stronger judgment and more resolute purpose might have 
prompted only the struggle that triumphs over the meanest 
circumstance, to him proved the hardest lesson yet in his life's 
hard school. He resisted with all his strength ; little less than a 
whole year, it is said, obstinately resisted, the new contempts and 
loss of worldly consideration thus bitterly set before him. He 
would rather have gone to the trade chalked out for him as his 
rough alternative, — when uncle Contarine interfered. 

This was an excellent man ; and with some means, though very 
far from considerable, to do justice to his kindly impulses. In 
youth he had been the college companion of Bishop Berkeley, and 
was worthy to have had so divine a friend. He too was a 
clergyman, and held the living of Kilmore near Carrick-on-Shannon, 
which he afterwards changed to that of Oran near Roscommon ; 
where he built the house of Emblemore, changed to that of Tempe 
by its subsequent possessor, Mr. Edward Mills, Goldsmith's 
relative and contemporary. Mr. Contarine had married Charles 
Goldsmith's sister (who died at about this date, leaving one child), 



chap, ii.] COLLEGE. 17 

and was the only member of the Goldsmith family of whom we have 
solid evidence that he at any time took pains with Oliver, or felt 
anything like a real pride in him. He bore the greater part of 
his school expenses ; and was wont to receive him with delight in 
holidays, as the playfellow of his daughter Jane, a year or two older 
than Oliver, and some seven years after this married to a Mr. 
Lawder. How little the most charitable of men will make 
allowance for differences of temper and disposition in the education 
of youth, is too well known : Mr. Contarine told Oliver that he 
had himself been a sizar, and that it had not availed to withhold 
from him the friendship of the great and the good. 

His counsel prevailed. The youth went to Dublin, showed by 
passing the necessary examination that his time at school had not 
been altogether thrown away, and on the 11th of June 1745 was 
admitted, last in the list of eight who so presented themselves, a 
sizar of Trinity College ; — there most speedily to earn that ex- 
perience, which, on his elder brother afterwards consulting him as 
to the education of his son, prompted him to answer thus : " If he 
"has ambition, strong passions, and an exquisite sensibility of con- 
" tempt, do not send him to your college, unless you have no other 
"trade for him except your own." 

Mood was then in the college, but being some years 
younger than Goldsmith, and a fellow commoner, it is not surprising 
that they should have held no intercourse ; but a greater than 
Flood, though himself little notable at college, said he perfectly 
recollected his old fellow-student, when they afterwards met at 
the house of Mr. Reynolds. Not that there was much for an 
Edmund Burke to recollect of him. Little went well with 
Goldsmith in his student course. He had a menial position, a 
savage brute for tutor, and few inclinations to the study exacted. 
He was not, indeed, as perhaps never living creature in this world 
was, without his consolations ; he could sing a song well, and, at a 
new insult or outrage, could blow off excitement through his flute 
with a kind of desperate "mechanical vehemence." At the worst 
he had, as he describes it himself, a " knack at hoping ;" and at all 
times, it must with equal certainty be aflirmed, a knack 
at getting into scrapes. Like Samuel Johnson at Oxford, jj, ,g 
he avoided lectures when he could, and was a lounger at 
the college gate. The popular picture of him in these Dublin 
University days, is little more than of a slow, hesitating, somewhat 
hollow voice, heard seldom and always to great disadvantage in the 
class-rooms ; and of a low-sized, thick, robust, ungainly figure, 
lounging about the college courts on the wait for misery and 
ill-luck. 

His Edgeworthstown schoolfellow, Beatty, had entered among 



18 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book r. 

the sizars with him, and for a time shared his rooms. They are 
described as the top-rooms adjoining the library of the building 
numbered 35, where the name of Oliver Goldsmith may still be 
seen, scratched by himself upon a window-pane. Another sizar, 
Marshall, is said to have been another of his chums. Among his 
occasional associates, were certainly Edward Mills, his relative ; 
Robert Bryanton, a Ballymahon youth, also his relative, of whom 
he was fond ; Charles and Edward Purdon, whom he lived to 
befriend ; James Willington, whose name he afterwards had 
permission to use in London, for low literary work he was ashamed 
to put his own to ; Wilson and Kearney, subsequently doctors and 
fellows of the college ; Wolfen, also well known ; and Lauchlan 
Macleane, whose political pamphlets, unaccepted challenge to 
Wilkes, and general party exertions, made a noise in the world 
twenty or thirty years later. But not till a man becomes famous 
is it to be expected that any wonderful feats of memory should be 
performed respecting him ; and it seems tolerably evident that, 
with the exception of perhaps Bryanton and Beatty, not one owner 
of the names recounted put himself in friendly relation with the 
sizar, to elevate, assist, or cheer him. Richard Malone, after- 
wards Lord Sunderlin ; Barnard and Marlay, afterwards worthy 
bishops of Killaloe and Waterford ; found nothing more pleasant 
than to talk of " their old fellow-collegian Doctor Goldsmith," in the 
painting-room of Reynolds : but nothing, I suspect, so difficult, 
thriving lads as they were in even these earlier days, than to 
vouchsafe recognition to the unthriving, depressed, insulted 
Oliver. 

A year and a half after he had entered college, at the com- 
mencement of 1747, his father suddenly died. The scanty 
^ t -^ sums required for his support had been often intercepted, 
but this stopped them altogether. It may have been the 
least and most trifling loss connected with that sorrow ; but 
" squalid poverty," relieved by occasional gifts, according to his 
small means, from uncle Contarine, by petty loans from Bryanton 
or Beatty, or by desperate pawning of his books of study, was 
Goldsmith's lot thenceforward. Yet even in the depths of that 
despair, arose the consciousness of faculties reserved for better 
fortune than continual contempt and failure. He would write 
street-ballads to save himself from actual starving ; sell them at the 
Rein-deer repository in Mountrath-court for five shillings a-piece ; 
and steal out of the college at night to hear them sung. 

Happy night, to him worth all the dreary days ! Hidden by 
some dusky wall, or creeping within darkling shadows of the ill 
lighted streets, this poor neglected sizar watched, waited, lingered, 
listened there, for the only effort of his life which had not wholly 



CHAP. II.] 



COLLEGE. 



19 



failed. Few and dull perhaps the beggar's audience at first, but 
more thronging, eager, and delighted, as he shouted forth his 
newly-gotten ware. Cracked enough, I doubt not, were those 
ballad-singing tones ; very harsh, extremely discordant, and 
passing from loud to low without meaning or melody ; but not 




the less did the sweetest music which this earth affords fall with 
them on the ear of Goldsmith. Gentle faces pleased, old men 
stopping by the way, young lads venturing a purchase with their 
last remaining farthing; why, here was a world in little with its 
fame at the sizar's feet ! ' ' The greater world will be listening 
" one day," perhaps he muttered, as he turned with a lighter heart 
to his dull home. 

It is said to have been a rare occurrence when the five shillings 
of the Rein-deer repository reached home along with him. It was 
more likely, when he was at his utmost need, to stop with some 
beggar on the road who had seemed to him even more destitute 
than himself. Nor this only. The money gone, — often, for the 
naked shivering wretch, had he slipped off a portion of the scanty 
clothes he wore, to patch a misery he could not otherwise relieve. 
To one starving creature with five crying children, he gave at one 
time the blankets off his bed, and crept himself into the ticking 



•20 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i. 

for shelter from the cold. For this latter anecdote, Mr. Mills, 
Goldsmith's relative and fellow student, is the authority. He 
occasionally furnished him, when in college, with small supplies, 
and gave him a breakfast now and then ; for which latter purpose 
having gone to call him one morning, Goldsmith's voice from 
within his own room proclaimed himself a prisoner, and that they 
must force the door to help him out. Mills did this, and found 
him so fastened in the ticking of the bed, into which he had taken 
refuge from the cold, that he could not escape unassisted. Late 
on the previous winter night, unable otherwise to relieve a woman 
and her five children who seemed all perishing for want of warmth, 
he had bjought out his blankets to the college-gate and given them 
to her. 

It is not meant to insist on these things as examples of conduct. 
" Sensibility is not Benevolence ; " nor will this kind of agonised 
sympathy with distress, even when graced by that active self-denial 
of which there is here little proof, supply the solid duties or 
satisfactions of life. There are distresses, vast and remote, with 
which it behoves us still more to sympathise than with those, less 
really terrible, which only more attract us by intruding on our 
senses ; and the conscience is too apt to discharge itself of the 
greater duty by instant and easy attention to the less. Let me 
observe also, that, in the case of a man dependent on others, the 
title to such enjoyment as such largeness and looseness of sympathy 
involves, has very obvious and controlling limits. So much it is 
right to interpose when anecdotes of this description are told ; but to 
Goldsmith, all the circumstances considered, they are really very 
creditable ; and it is well to recollect them when the " neglected 
opportunities " of his youth are spoken of. Doubtless there were 
better things to be done, by a man of stronger purpose. But the 
nature of men is not different from that of other living creatures ; 
it gives the temper and the disposition, but not the nurture or the 
culture. These Goldsmith never rightly had, except in such sort 
as he could himself provide ; and now, assuredly, he had not 
found them in his college. " That strong, steady disposition which 
"alone makes men great," he avowed himself deficient in : but 
were other dispositions not worth the caring for ? " His imagina- 
tion" (as, with obvious allusion to his own case, he says of 
Parnell's) "might have been too warm to relish the cold logic of 
" Burgersdicius, or the dreary subtleties of Smiglesius : " but with 
nothing less cold or dreary might a warm imagination have been 
cherished 1 When, at the house of Burke, he talked these matters 
over in after years with Edmond Malone, he said that, though he 
made no great figure in mathematics, which was a study in much 
repute there, he could turn an ode of Horace into English better 






chap, ii.] COLLEGE. 21 

than any of them. His tutor, Mr. Theater Wilder, would sooner 
have set him to turn a lathe. 

This tutor, this reverend instructor of youth, was the same who, 
on one occasion in Dublin streets, sprang at a bound from the 
pavement on a hackney-coach which was passing at its swiftest 
pace, and felled to the ground the driver, who had accidentally 
touched his face with the whip. So, mathematics being Mr. 
Theaker Wilder's intellectual passion, the same strength, agility, 
and ferocity which drove him into brawls with hackney-coachmen, 
he carried to the demonstrations of Euclid ; and for this, all his 
life afterwards, even more than poet Gray, did poor Goldsmith 
wage war with mathematics. Never had he stood up in his class 
that this learned savage did not outrage and insult him. Having 
the misery to mistake malice for wit, the comic as well as tragic 
faculty of Mr. Wilder found endless recreation in the awkward, 
ugly, "ignorant," most sensitive young man. There was no 
pause or limit to the strife between them. The tutor's brutality 
rose even to personal violence ; the pupil's shame and suffering 
hardened into reckless idleness ; and the college career of Oliver 
Goldsmith was proclaimed a wretched failure. 

Let us be thankful that it was no worse, and that participitation 
in a college riot was after all the highest of his college crimes. 
Twice indeed he was cautioned for neglecting even his Greek 
lecture ; but he was also thrice commended for diligence in 
attending it ; and Doctor Kearney said he once got a prize at a 
Christmas examination in classics. The latter seems doubtful ; 
but at any rate the college riot was the worst to allege against 
him, and in this there was no very active sin. A scholar had 
been arrested, though the precincts of the university had always 
been held privileged from the intrusion of bailiffs, and the students 
resolved to take rough revenge. It was in the summer of 1747. 
They explored every bailiff's den in Dublin, found the offender by 
whom the arrest was made, brought him naked to the college 
pump, washed his delinquency thoroughly out of him ; and were 
so elated with the triumph, and everything that bore affinity to 
law, restraint, or authority, looked so ludicrous in the person of 
this drenched bailiff's-runner, their miserable representative, that 
it was on the spot proposed to crown and consummate success by 
breaking open Newgate, and making a general jail delivery. 
The Black Dog, as the prison was called, stood on the feeblest 
of legs, and with one small piece of artillery must have gone 
down- for ever ; but the cannon was with the constable, the 
assailants were repulsed, and some townsmen attracted by the fray 
unhappily lost their lives. Five of the ringleaders were discovered 
and expelled the college ; and among five lesser offenders who 



22 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. 



[book I. 



were publicly admonished for being present, "aiding and abetting" 
(Quod seditioni favisset et tumultuantibus opem tulisset), the 
name of Oliver Goldsmith occurs. 

More galled by formal University admonition than by Wilder's 
insults, and anxious to wipe out a disgrace that seemed not so 
undeserved, Goldsmith tried in the next month for a scholarship. 
He lost the scholarship, but got an exhibition : a very small exhibi- 
tion truly, worth some thirty shillings, of which there were nine- 
teen in number, and his was seventeenth in the list. In the way 
of honour or glory this was trifling enough ; but, little used to 
anything in the shape of even such a success, he let loose his 
unaccustomed joy in a small dancing party at his rooms, of 
humblest sort. 

Wilder heard of the affront to discipline, suddenly showed him- 
self in the middle of the festivity, and knocked down the poor 
triumphant exhibitioner. It seemed an irretrievable disgrace. 



i&fffVj 




Goldsmith sold his books next day, got together a small sum, ran 
away from college, lingered fearfully about Dublin till his money 
was spent, and then, with a shilling in his pocket, set out for Cork. 
He did not know where he would have gone, he said, but he 
thought of America. For three days he lived upon the shilling ; 






chap, il] COLLEGE. 23 

parted by degrees with nearly all his clothes, to save himself from 
famine ; and long afterwards told Reynolds what his sister relates 
in her narrative, that of all the exquisite meals he had ever tasted, 
the most delicious was a handful of grey peas given him by a girl 
at a wake after twenty-four hours' fasting. The vision of America 
sank before this reality, and he turned his feeble steps to Lissoy. 
His brother had private intimation of his state, went to him, 
clothed him, and carried him back to college. " Something of a 
"reconciliation," says Mrs. Hodson, was effected with the tutor. 

Probably the tutor made so much concession as to promise not to ' 
strike him to the ground again ; for certainly no other im- 
provement is on record. An anecdote, " often told in con- -J. 2 ' 
' ' versation to Bishop Percy, " exhibits the sizar at his usual 
disadvantage. Wilder called on Goldsmith, at a lecture, to explain 
the centre of gravity, which, on getting no answer, he proceeded him- 
self to explain : calling out harshly to Oliver at the close, "Now, 
"blockhead, where is your centre of gravity?" The answer, which 
was delivered in a slow, hollow, stammering voice, and began 
" Why, Doctor, by your definition, I think it must be" — disturbed 
every one's centre of gravity in the lecture room ; and, turning the 
laugh against Wilder, turned down poor Oliver. And so the insults, 
the merciless jests, the " Oliver Goldsmith turned down," appear to 
have continued as before. We still trace him less by his fame in the 
class-room than by his fines in the buttery-books. The only change 
is in that greater submission of the victim which marks unsuccessful 
rebellion. He offers no resistance ; makes no effort of any kind ; 
sits, for the most part, indulging day-dreams. A Greek Scapula 
has been identified which he used at this time, scrawled over with 
his writing. " Free. Oliver Goldsmith ; " "I promise to pay, 
" <fec. Oliver Goldsmith ; " are among the autograph's musing 
shapes. Perhaps one half the day he was with Steele or Addison 
in parliament ; perhaps the other half in prison with Collins or 
with Fielding. We should be thankful, as I have said, that a 
time so dreary and dark bore no worse fruit than that. The 
shadow cast over his spirit, the uneasy sense of disadvantage which 
obscured his ' manners in later years, affected himself singly ; but 
how many they are whom such suffering, and such idleness, would 
have wholly and for ever corrupted. The spirit hardly less 
generous, cheerful, or self-supported than Goldsmith's, has been 
broken by them utterly. 

He took his degree of bachelor of arts on the 27th February, 
1749 ; and as his name stood lowest in the list of sizars 
with whom he was originally admitted, so it stands also jJ, -i 
lowest in a list still existing of the graduates who passed on 
the same day, and thus became entitled to use the college library. 



24 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i. 

But it would be needless to recount the names that appear above 
his ; for the public merits of their owners ended with their college 
course, and oblivion has received them. Nor indeed does that 
position of his name necessarily indicate his place in the examina- 
tion ; it being then the usage to regulate the mere college standing 
of a student through the whole of his course, by his position obtained 
at starting. But be this as it might, Mr. Wilder and his pupil 
now parted for ever : and when the friend of Burke, of Johnson, 
and of Reynolds, next heard the name of his college tyrant, a 
violent death had overtaken him in a dissolute brawl. 



CHAPTER III. 



THREE YEARS OF IDLENESS. 1749—1752. 

Goldsmith returned to his mother's house. There were great 
changes. She had removed, in her straitened circum- 
td, 21 stances, to a cottage at Ballymahon, " situated on the 
" entrance to Ballymahon from the Edgeworthstown-road 
" on the left-hand side." His brother Henry had gone back to his 
father's little parsonage house at Pallas ; and, with his father's old 
pittance of forty pounds a year, was serving as curate to the 
living of Kilkenny West, and was master of the village school, 
which after shifting about not a little had become ultimately fixed 
at Lissoy. His eldest sister, Mrs. Hodson, for whom the 
sacrifice was made that impoverished the family resources, was 
mistress of the old and better Lissoy parsonage house, in which 
his father had lived his latter life. All entreated Oliver to qualify 
himself for orders ; and when they joined uncle Contarine's request, 
his own objection was withdrawn. But he is only twenty-one ; he 
must wait two years ; and they are passed at Ballymahon. 

It is the sunny time between two dismal periods of his life. 
He has escaped one scene of misery; another is awaiting him; 
and what possibilities of happiness lie in the interval, it is his 
nature to seize and make the most of. He assists his brother 
Henry in the school ; runs household errands for his mother, as if 
he were still what the village gossips called him, " Master Noll," and 
brings her green tea by the ounce, the half ounce, and the quarter 
ounce, for which the charges respectively are sevenpence, threepence 
halfpenny, and twopence ; he writes scraps of verse to please his 
uncle Contarine ; and, to please himself, gets cousin Bryanton and 
Tony Lumpkins of the district, with wandering bear-leaders of 



CHAP. III.] 



THREE YEARS OF IDLENESS. 



25 



genteeler sort, to meet at an old inn by his mother's house, and 
be a club for story-telling, for an occasional game of whist, and 
for the singing of songs. First in these accomplishments, great 



n^ffllliiiiKftf 




at Latin quotations, as admirer of happy human faces greatest of 
all, — Oliver presides. Cousin Bryanton had seen his disgrace in 
college, and thinks this a triumph indeed. So seems it to the 
hero of the triumph, on whose taste and manners, still only 
forming as yet in these sudden and odd extremes, many an 
amusing shade of contrast must have fallen in after-life, from the 
storms of Wilder's class-room and the sunshine of George 
Conway's inn. 

Thus the two years passed. In the day-time occupied, as 

I have said, in the village school; on the winter nights, at 

Conway's; and, in the evenings of summer, taking solitary walks 

among the rocks and wooded islands of the Inny, strolling up its 

banks to fish or play the flute, otter-hunting (as he tells us in his 

Animated Nature) by the course of the Shannon, learning French 

J from the Irish priests, or winning a prize for throwing the sledge- 

I hammer at the fair of Ballymahon. " A lady who died lately in this 

"neighbourhood," says Mr. Shaw Mason, in his account of the 

! district, "and who was well acquainted with Mrs. Goldsmith, men- 

i | tioned that it was one of Oliver's habits to sit in a window of his 

I mother's lodgings, and amuse himself by playing the flute." 

Two sunny years, with sorrowful affection long remembered; 

j storing up his mind with many a thought and fancy turned 

I to profitable use in after-life, but hardly better than his college 

course to help him through the world. So much even occurred to 

himself when eight years were gone, and, in the outset of his 

London distresses, he turned back with wistful looks to Ireland. 



26 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i. 

"Unaccountable fondness for country, this Maladie du Pais, as J 
' ' the French call it ! " he exclaimed, writing to his brother-in-law 
Hodson. " Unaccountable that he should still have an affection 
"for a place who never received when in it above common 
"civility; who never brought anything out of it except his brogue 
" and his blunders. . . What gives me a wish to see Treland again? 
"The country is a fine one perhaps? No. There are good 
' { company in Ireland ? No. The conversation there is generally 
4 '• made up of a smutty toast or a bawdy song ; the vivacity 
"supported by some humble cousin, who has just folly enough to 
"earn his dinner. Then perhaps there's more wit and learning 
" among the Irish? Oh, lord! no! There has been more money 
" spent in the encouragement of the Padareen mare there one 
" season, than given in rewards to learned men since the times of, 
" Usher. All their productions in learning amount to perhaps a 
"translation, or a few tracts in divinity; and all their productions 
"in wit, to just nothing at all." 

But perhaps the secret escaped without his knowledge, when, in 
that same year, he was writing to a more intimate friend. 
"I have disappointed your neglect," he said to Bryanton, "by 
"frequently thinking of you. Every day do I remember 
a?/ 99 "the cami anecdotes of your life, from the fireside to the 
' ' easy chair : recal the various adventures that first cemented 
"our friendship: the school, the college, or the tavern: preside in 
" fancy over your cards : and am displeased at your bad play when 
"the rubber goes against you, though not with all that agony of 
" soul as when I once was your partner." Let the truth, then, be 
confessed; and that it was the careless idleness of fire-side and 
easy chair, that it was the tavern excitement of the game at cards, 
to which Goldsmith so wistfully looked back from those first hard 
London struggles. 

It is not an example I would wish to inculcate ; nor is this 
narrative written with that purpose. To try any such process for 
the chance of another Goldsmith would be a somewhat dangerous 
attempt. The truth is important to be kept in view : that genius, 
representing as it does the perfect health and victory of the mind, 
is in no respect allied to those weaknesses, but, when unhappily 
connected with them, is in itself a means to avert their most evil 
consequence. Of the associates of Goldsmith in these happy, 
careless years, perhaps not one emerged to better fortune, and 
many sank to infinitely worse. " Pray give my love to Bob 
" Bryanton, and entreat him from me, not to drink," is a passage 
from one of his later letters to his brother Henry. The habit of 
drinking he never suffered to overmaster himself; — if the love of 
gaming to some trifling extent continued, it was at least the 



chap, in.] THREE YEARS OF IDLENESS. 27 

origin of many thoughts that may have saved others from like 
temptation ; — and if these irregular early years unsettled him for 
the pursuits his friends would have had him follow, and sent him 
wandering, with no pursuit, to mix among the poor and happy of 
other lands, it is very certain that he brought back some secrets 
both of poverty and happiness which were worth the finding, and, 
having paid for his errors by infinite personal privation, turned all 
the rest to the comfort and instruction of the world. There 
is a providence that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will ; 
and to charming issues did the providence of Goldsmith's genius 
shape these rough-hewn times. What it received in mortification 
or grief, it gave back in cheerful humour or whimsical warning. 
It was not alone that it made him wise enough to know what 
infirmities he had, but it gave him the rarer wisdom of turning 
them to entertainment and to profit. Through the pains and 
obstructions of his childhood, through the uneasy failures of 
his youth, through the desperate struggles of his manhood, it 
lighted him to those last uses of experience and suffering which 
have given him an immortal name. 

And let it be observed, that this Ballymahon idleness could lay 
claim to a certain activity in one respect. It was always cheerful ; 
and this is no unimportant part of education, if heart and head 
are to go together. " Rely upon it, Sir," said Johnson to 
Boswell, " vivacity is much an art, and depends greatly on habit." 
It will be well, therefore, when habits of cheerfulness are as much 
a part of formal instruction as habits of study ; and when the 
foolish argument will be heard no longer, that such things are in 
nature's charge, and may be left exclusively to her. Nature asks 
help and culture in all things; and will even yield to their 
solicitation, what would otherwise lie utterly unknown. It was 
an acute remark of Goldsmith's, in respect to literary efforts, that 
the habit of writing will give a man justness of thinking ; and that 
he may get from it a mastery of manner, which holiday writers, 
though with ten times his genius, will find it difficult to equal. 
It is the same in temper as in mind : habit comes in aid of 
all deficiencies. The reader will be therefore not unprepared ^ 2 g 
to find, as well in these sunny Irish years, as in other parts 
of the apparently vagrant and idle career to be now described, 
some points of even general beneficial example. 

The two years, then, are passed ; and Oliver must apply for 
orders. " For the clerical profession," says Mrs. Hodson, " he had 
"no liking." It is not very wonderful ; after having seen, in his 
father and his brother, how much learning and labour were rewarded 
in the church by forty pounds a year. But he had yet another, 
and to him perhaps a stronger motive ; though I do not know if 

c2 



28 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book r. 

it has not been brought against him as an imputation of mere 
vanity or simplicity, that he once said, " he did not deem himself 
" good enough for it." His friends, however, though not so 
resolutely as at first, still advised him to this family profession. 
" Our friends," says the man in black, " always advise, when they 
" begin to despise us." He made application to the Bishop of: 
Elphin, and was refused ; sent back as he went ; in short, 
plucked ; — but the story is told in various ways, and it is hard to 
get at the truth. His sister says that his youth was the objection; 
while it was a tradition " in the diocese" that either Mr. Theaker 
Wilder had given the bishop an exaggerated report of his college 
irregularities, or (which is more likely, and indeed is the only 
reasonable account of the affair) that he had neglected the pre- 
liminary professional studies. Doctor Strean on the other hand 
fully believed, from rumours he picked up, that "Mr. Noll's" 
offence was the having presented himself before his right reverence 
in scarlet breeches ; and certainly if this last reason be the true 
one, it is our first ominous experience of the misplaced personal 
finery which will find reiterated mention in this veritable histoiy. 
But in truth the rejection is the only absolute certainty. The 
man in black, it will be remembered, undergoes something of the 
same kind, remarking, " my friends were now perfectly satisfied 
"I was undone ; and yet they thought it a pity, for one that had 
" not the least harm in him, and was so very goodnatured. " 
• Uncle Contarine, however, was far from thinking this. He 
found a gentleman of his county, a Mr. Flinn, in want of a tutor, 
and recommended Oliver. The engagement continued for a year, 
and ended, as it might have been easy to anticipate, unsatisfac- 
torily. His talent for card-playing, as well as for teaching, is said 
to have been put in requisition by Mr. Flinn ; and the separation 
took place on Goldsmith's accusing one of the family of unfair play. 
But when he left this excellent Irish family and returned to 
Ballymahon, he had thirty pounds in his pocket, it is to be hoped 
the produce of fairer play ; and was undisputed owner of a good 
plump horse. Within a few days, so furnished and mounted, he 
again left his mother's house (where, truth to say, things do not 
by this time seem to have been made very comfortable to him), 
and started for Cork, with another floating vision of America. He 
returned in six weeks, with nothing in his pocket, and on a lean 
beast, to which he had given the name of Fiddleback. The nature 
of his reception at Ballymahon appears from the simple remark 
he is said to have made to his mother. "And now, my dear 
" mother, after having struggled so hard to come home to you, I 
" wonder you are not more rejoiced to see me." 

He afterwards addressed a clever though somewhat cavalier 



CHAP. III.] 



THREE YEARS OF IDLENESS. 



29 




letter to her from his brother's house ; which is open to the objec- 
tion that no copy exists in his hand-writing, but which has great 
internal evidence of his facility, grace, and humour. 
Nor is there anything more signally worth remark in kX 

connection with the vagabond vicissitudes which these 
pages will have to record, than that, out of all the 
accidents which befel the man, the poverty he had 
to undergo, the companions with whom he associated, 
the sordid necessities which unavoidably conduct so 
often into miry ways, no single speck or stain ever 
fell on that enchanting beauty of style. 
Wherever he might be, or with whatever 
clowns for playfellows ; in the tavern, in 
the garret, or among citizens in the Sunday 
gardens ; when he took 

in VisinrJ Tio -nro c: 



the pen in hand, he was 
a gentleman. Everything 
coarse or vulgar dropped 
from it instinctively. It 
reflected nothing, even in 
its descriptions of things 
vulgar or coarse in them- 
selves, but the elegance and 
sweetness, which, whatever 
might be the accident or 
meanness of his external 
lot, remained pure in the last recesses of his nature. 

In substance this letter to his mother confessed that his inten- 
tion was to have sailed for America ; that he had gone to Cork for 
that purpose, and converted the horse which his mother prized so 
much higher than Fiddleback, into cash ; that he had paid for his pas- 
sage in an American ship, and, the wind threatening to detain them 
some days, had taken a little country excursion in the neighbourhood 
of the city ; but that, the wind suddenly serving in his absence, his 
friend the captain had never inquired after him, but set sail with as 
much indifference as if he had been on board. " You know, 
"mother," he remarks, "that no one can starve while he has 
" money in his pocket :" and, being reduced by the practice of 
this apophthegm to his last two guineas, he bought the generous 
beast, Fiddleback, for one pound seventeen, and with five shillings 
in his pocket turned homewards. Then had come one of those 
sudden appeals to a sharp and painful susceptibility, when, as he 
afterwards described them to his brother, charitable to excess, he 
forgot the rules of justice, and placed himself in the situation of 
the wretch who was thanking him for his bounty. Penniless in 




30 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i. 

consequence, he bethought him of a college acquaintance on the 
road, to whose house he went. With exquisite humour he describes 
this most miserly acquaintance, who, to allay his desperate hunger, 
dilated on the advantages of a diet of slops, and set him down to 
a porringer of sour milk and a heel of musty cheese ; and, being 
asked for the loan of a guinea, earnestly recommended the sale of 
Fiddleback, producing what he called a much better nag to ride 
upon, which would cost neither price nor provender, in the shape of 
a stout oaken cudgel. His adventures ended a little more agree- 
ably at last, however, in a more genial abode, where an acquaint- 
ance of the miser entertained him. He had "two sweet girls to 
" his daughters, who played enchantingly on the harpsichord; and 
" yet it was but a melancholy pleasure I felt the first time I heard 
" them ; for, that being the first time also that either of them had 
" touched the instrument since their mother's death, I saw the 
" tears in silence trickle down their father's cheeks." 

Law was the next thing thought of, and the good Mr. Contarine 
came forward with fifty pounds. It seems a small sum where- 
at 24 w ^ n t° travel to Dublin and London, to defray expenses of 
' entrance at inns of court, and to live upon till a necessary num- 
ber of terms are eaten. But with fifty pounds young Oliver started ; 
on a luckless journey. A Roscommon friend laid hold of him in 
Dublin, seduced him to play, and the fifty pounds he would have raised 
to a hundred, he reduced to fifty pence. In bitter shame, after great 
physical suffering, he wrote to his uncle, confessed, and was forgiven. 

On return to Ballymahon, it is probable that his mother objected 
to receive him ; since after this date we find him living wholly with 
his brother. It was but for a short time, however ; disagreement 
followed there too ; and we see him next by Mr. Contarine's 
fireside, again talking literature to his good-natured uncle, writing 
new verses to please him (alleged copies of which are not sufficiently 
authentic to be believed in), and joining his flute to Miss Contarine's 
harpsichord. 



CHAPTEK IV. 



PREPARING FOR A MEDICAL DEGREE. 1752—1755. 

The years of idleness must nevertheless come to a close. To do 
nothing, no matter how melodiously accompanied by flute 

7p. 94 and harpsichord, is not what a man is born into this world 
to do ; and it required but a casual word from a not very 

genial visitor, to close for ever Goldsmith's happy nights at uncle 






3hap. iv.] PREPARING FOR A MEDICAL DEGREE. 31 

Contarine's. There was a sort of cold grandee of the family, Dean 
Goldsmith of Cloyne, who did not think it unbecoming his dignity 
to visit the good clergyman's parsonage now and then ; and Oliver 
having made a remark which showed him no fool, the dean gave 
it as his opinion to Mr. Contarine that his young relative would 
make an exellent medical man. The hint seemed a good one, and 
was the dean's contribution to his young relative's fortune. The 
small purse was contributed by Mr. Contarine ; and in the 
autumn of 1752, Oliver Goldsmith started for Edinburgh, medical 
student. 

Anecdotes of amusing simplicity and forgetfulness in this new 
character are, as usual, more rife than notices of his course of 
study ; but such records as have been preserved of the period rest 
upon authority too obviously doubtful to require other than a very 
cursory mention here. On the day of his arrival he is reported to 
have set forth for a ramble round the streets, after leaving his lug- 
gage at hired lodgings where he had forgotten to inquire the name 
either of the street or the landlady, and to which he only found his 
way back by the accident of meeting the porter who had carried his 
trunk from the coach. He is also said to have obtained, in this 
temporary abode, a knowledge of the wondrous culinary expedients 
with which three medical students might be supported for a whole 
week on a single loin of mutton, by a brandered chop served up 
one day, a fried steak another, chops with onion sauce a third, and 
so on till the fleshy parts should be quite consumed, when finally, 
on the seventh day, a dish of broth manufactured from the bones 
would appear, and the ingenious landlady rested from her labours. 
It is moreover recorded, in proof of his careless habits in respect to 
money, that being in company with several fellow-students on the 
first night of a new play, he suddenly proposed to draw lots with 
any one present which of the two should treat the whole party to 
the theatre ; when the real fact was, as he afterwards confessed in 
speaking of the secret joy with which he heard them all decline the 
challenge, that had it been accepted, and had he proved the loser, he 
must have pledged a part of his wardrobe in order to raise the 
money. This last anecdote, if true, reveals to us at any rate that 
he had a wardrobe to pledge. Such resource in the matter of dress 
is one of his peculiarities found generally peeping out in some form 
or other : and, unable to confirm any other fact in these recollec- 
tions, I can at least establish that. 

But first let me remark that no traditions remain of the character 
or extent of his studies. It seems tolerably certain that any 
learned celebrity he may have got in the schools, paled an ineffectual 
fire before his amazing social repute, as inimitable teller of a 
humorous story and capital singer of Irish songs. He became a 






32 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [i 



member of the Medical Society, and on his admission appears to 
have been exempted from the usual condition of reading a paper 
on a medical subject. But he was really fond of chemistry, and 
was remembered favourably by the celebrated Black ; other well- 
known fellow-students, as William Fair, and his whilome college 
acquaintance, Lauchlan Macleane, conceived a regard for him, which 
somewhat later Fair seems to have had the opportunity of showing ; 
certainly of kind quaker Sleigh, afterwards known as the eminent 
physician of that name, as painter Barry's first patron, Burke's friend, 
and one of the many victims of Foote's witty malice, so much may 
without contradiction be affirmed ; and it is therefore to be sup- 
posed that his eighteen months' residence in Edinburgh was, on the 
whole, not unprofitable. It had its mortifications, of course ; for 
all his life had these. ' ' An ugly and a poor man is society only 
"for himself; and such society the world lets me enjoy in great 
" abundance : " " nor do I envy my dear Bob his blessings, while 
"I may sit down and laugh at the world; and at myself, the 
''most ridiculous object in it:" are among his expressions of 
half bitter, half good-natured candour, in a letter to his cousin 
Bryanton. 

There is another confession in a later letter to his uncle, which 
touches him in a nearer point, and suggests perhaps more than it 
reveals. It would seem as though, to eke out his resources, he 
had for some part of his time accepted employment in a great 
man's house : probably as tutor. " I have spent," he says, " more 
"than a fortnight every second day at the Duke of Hamilton's ; 
"but it seems they like me more as a jester than as a companion ; 
" so I disdained so servile an employment." To those with whom, 
on equal terms, he could be both jester and companion, Bryanton 
was charged with every kind of remembrance. ' ' You cannot send 
"me much news from Ballymahon, but such as it is, send it all ; 
"everything you send will be agreeable to me. Has George 
" Conway put up a sign yet ? or John Binely left off drinking 
"drams? or Tom Allen got a new wig?" To the pleasant and 
whimsical satire of the Scotch he at the same time sent to 
Bryanton, I need scarcely have referred, because in all the editions 
of his works, except the Scotch, it is commonly printed : but in 
merely alluding to these various letters it will be well to reserve 
any special belief in the accuracy of all their statements. As 
a generally humorous picture drawn from various sources, rather 
than a strictly veracious record of his own experience, it will 
be safest to regard them ; but this remark applies less strongly 
to those two of the three letters to his uncle Contarine, the earliest 
in date and least important in contents, which have been recently 
discovered. 



chap, iv.] PREPARING FOR A MEDICAL DEGREE. 33 

In the first, dated May, 1753, and in which he alludes to a de- 
scription of himself by his uncle, as "the philosopher who 
" carries all his goods about him," he describes Munro as the ™' 2 % 
one great professor, and the rest of the doctor-teachers as 
only less afflicting to their students than they must be to their 
patients. He makes whimsical mention of a trip to the Highlands, 
for which he had hired a horse about the size of a ram, who 
" walked away ( trot he could not) as pensive as his master." 
Other passages have a tendency to show within what really narrow 
limits he had brought his wants ; with how little he was prepared 
to be cheerfully content ; and that, for whatever advances were 
sent him, though certainly it might have been desirable that he 
should have turned them to more practical use, he at least over- 
flowed with gratitude. 

There has been occasionally a harsh judgment of Goldsmith for 
this money so wasted on abortive professional undertakings : but 
the sacrifices cannot fairly be called very great. Burke had an 
allowance of 200?. a-year for leisure to follow studies to which he 
never paid the least attention ; and when his father anxiously 
expected to hear of his call to the bar, he might have heard, instead, 
of a distress which forced him to sell his books : yet no one thinks, 
and rightly, of exacting penalties from Burke on this ground. 
Poor Goldsmith's supplies were on the other hand small, irregular, 
uncertain, and, in some two years at the furthest, exhausted 
altogether. 

Here, in this letter to his uncle, he says that he has drawn for 
six pounds, and that his next draft, five months after this date, 
will be for but four pounds ; pleading in extenuation of these light 
demands, that he has been obliged to buy everything since he came 
to Scotland, "shirts not even excepted :" while in another letter 
at the close of the same year he accounts for money spent, by the 
remark that he has ' ' good store of clothes " to accompany him on 
his travels. Yet there was decided moderation even in the direc- 
tion sartorial ; nor does the wardrobe, to which allusion was made 
a few pages back, appear to have been by any means extensive in 
the proportion of the gaiety of its colours. Upon the latter point 
our evidence is not to be gainsayed. What will have to be re- 
marked of Goldsmith in this respect at Mr. Boswell's or Sir 
Joshua's, is already to be said of him in the lodging-house and 
lecture-room at Edinburgh ; and on the same proof of old tailor's 
bills, the very ghosts of which continue to flutter about and plague 
his memory. 

The leaf of an Edinburgh ledger of 1753 has fallen into my 
hands, from which it would appear that one of his fellow students, 
Mr. Honner, had introduced him at the beginning of that year to 

c3 



34 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. 



[book I. 



a merchant tailor with whom he dealt for sundry items of hose, 
hats, silver lace, satin, allapeen, fustian, durant, shalloon, cloth, 
and velvet ; which materials of adornment are charged to him, 
from the January to the December of the year, in the not very 
immoderate sum of 91. lis. 2^d., the first entries of which, to the 
amount of 31. 15s. 9f cZ. were in November duly paid in full, and 
what remained at the year's end carried to a folio in the same 
ledger, unluckily destroyed before it was discovered to whom the 
page related. I owe this curious little document to the kindness 
of Mr. David Laing, of the Signet Library in Edinburgh, who 
remarks in sending it, that unfortunately the folio 424, to 
which reference is made at its close, had been torn up before 
the earlier leaf was discovered. Neither was there any indication 
of the name of the merchant tailor. 



Mr Oliver Goldsmith, Student, pr. Mr. Honker. 



1753. 
Jan? 



24. To 21 yds. rich Sky-Blew sattin, 12s. 

,, To \\ yds. white Allapeen, 2s. . 

,, To If yds. Do. Fustian, Is. id. 

,, To 4 yds. Blew Durant, Is. id. 

To | yds. fine Sky-Blew Shalloon, Is. 9c?. 

Feb^ 23. To 2£ yds. fine Priest's Grey cloth, 10s. U. 

,, To 2 yds. Black shalloon, Is. 6c?. 

,, To a pair fine 3-thd Black worsed Hose 

,, To | yds. rich Ditto Genoa velvett, 22s. 



P. 383. 



s. d. 

10 

3 

2 4 
5 4 
1 3J 

3 71 



Nov r . 23. By Cash in full 



3 15 

£3 15 



Dec r . 6. 



To 1 oz. 6| drs. silver Hatt-Lace, 8s. . . . 
To 1 drs. silver chain, 6d., and plate button, 2c?. 
To lacing your Hatt, 6d., and a new lyning, 6c?. 

To a sfine small Hatt 

To 3^ yds. best sfine high Clarett-colour'd 

Cloth, 19s 

To 51 yds. sfine best White shall"., 2s. . 

To 4 yds. white Fustian, 16c?.. . . . 

To a pr sfine Best Blk worsed hose . 



11 4^ 



1 





14 





3 6 


6 


11 





5 


4 


5 


6 



£5 15 n 



To Folio 424. 



Such is the old leaf, exactly copied ; and radiant as it is, 
through all its age and dinginess, with a name bright and familiar 
since to many generations of boys and men in the good merchant- 
tailor's city, is it not also still sparkling in every part with its 
rich sky-blue satin, its fine sky-blue shalloon, its superfine silver- 
laced small hat, its rich black Genoa velvet, and its best superfine 



ch-vp. it.]. PREPARING FOR A MEDICAL DEGREE. 35 

high, claret-coloured cloth ? for which the graTest reader will not 
unwillingly spare a smile, before he returns with me to the letters 
that preceded student Oliver's departure for the continent. 

In that first letter he had professed himself pleased with his studies, 
and expressed a hope that when he should have heard Munro for 
another year, he might go " to hear Albinus, the great professor at 
" Ley den." The whole of the letter gives evidence of a 
most grateful affection. In the second, written eight ■£, e '„ 
months later, where he describes his preparations for travel, 
and, confirming his intentions as to Leyden in the following winter, 
says that he shall pass the intervening months in Paris, the same 
feeling is not less apparent : " Let me here acknowledge," he says, 
r the humility of the station in which you found me ; let me tell 
" how I was despised by most, and hateful to myself. Poverty, 
" hopeless poverty, was my lot, and Melancholy was beginning to 
" make me her own. When you . . . . " This good man did 
not live to know the entire good he had done, or that his own 
name would probably live with the memory of it as long as the 
English language lasted. " Thou best of men ! " exclaims his 
nephew in the third of these letters, to which I shall presently 
make larger reference, " may heaven guard and preserve you and 
" those you love ! " It is the care of Heaven that actions worthy 
of itself should in the doing find reward, nor have to wait for it 
even on the thanks and prayers of such a heart as Goldsmith's. 
Another twenty pounds are acknowledged on the eve of departure 
from Edinburgh, as the last he will ever draw for. It was the 
last of which we have record. But Goldsmith had drawn his last 
breath before he forgot his uncle Contarine. 

The old vicissitudes attended him at this new move in his game 
of life. Land rats and water rats were at his heels as he quitted 
Scotland ; bailiffs hunted him for security given to a fellow-student 
("for this he was arrested," says the Percy Memoir, "but soon 
" released by the liberal assistance of his friends, Mr. Lauchlan 
" Macleane and Dr. Sleigh, who were then in college "), and 
shipwreck he only escaped by a fortnight's imprisonment on a 
false political charge. Bound for Leyden, and his purpose to 
interpose Paris for some reason or other laid aside, with charac- 
teristic carelessness or oddity he had secured his passage in a ship 
bound for Bourdeaux ; but, taken for a Jacobite in Newcastle-on- 
Tyne, and in Sunderland arrested by a tailor, the ship sailed on 
without him, and sank at the mouth of the Garonne. " We were 
"but two days at sea," he says, " when a storm drove us into a 
"city of England called Newcastle-upon-Tyne. We all went 
"ashore to refresh us after the fatigue of our voyage. Seven men 
" and I were one day on shore, and on the following evening, as we 



36 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book r. 

" were all very merry, the room door bursts open : enters a ser- 
geant and twelve grenadiers, with their bayonets screwed, and 
" puts us all under the king's arrest. It seems my company were 
" Scotchmen in the French service, and had been in Scotland to 
" enlist soldiers for the French army. I endeavoured all I could 
" to prove my innocence ; however, I remained in prison with the 
" rest a fortnight, and with difficulty got off even then." These 
facts are stated on his own authority ; but whether they are 
all exactly credible, or whether credit may not rather be due to 
the suggestion that they were mere fanciful modes of carrying off 
the loss, in other ways, of money given to enable him to carry on 
studies in which it cannot now be supposed that he took any great 
interest, I shall leave to the judgment of the reader. 

Certain it is that at last he got safe to the learned city ; and 
wrote off to his uncle, among other sketches of character obviously 
meant to give him pleasure, what he thought of the three specimens 
of womankind he had now seen, out of Ireland. " A Dutch 
" woman and Scotch will well bear an opposition. The one is pale 
" and fat, the other lean and ruddy : the one walks as if she were 
" straddling after a go-cart, and the other takes too masculine a 
" stride. I shall not endeavour to deprive either country of its 
"share of beauty ; but I must say, that of all objects on this 
" earth, an English farmer's daughter is most charming." In the 
same delightful letter he observingly corrects the vulgar notion of 
the better kind of Dutchman, amusingly comparing him with the 
downright Hollander, while in equally happy vein he con- 
aj/ 97 trasts Scotland and Holland. The playful tone of these 
passages, the amusing touch of satire, and the incomparably 
easy style, so compact and graceful, were announcements, properly 
first vouchsafed to the delight of good Mr. Contarine, of powers 
that were one day to give unfading delight to all the world. 

Little is known of his pursuits at Leyden, beyond the fact that 
he mentions himself, in his Enquiry into Polite Learning, as in the 
habit of familar intercourse with Gaubius, the chemical professor. 
But by this time he would seem to have applied himself, with 
little affectation of disguise, to general knowledge more than to 
professional. The one was available in immediate wants; the 
other pointed to but a distant hope which those very wants made, 
daily, more obscure ; and the narrow necessities of self-help now 
crowded on him. His principal means of support were as a teacher ; 
but the difficulties and disappointments of his own philosophic 
vagabond, when he went to Holland to teach the natives English, 
himself knowing nothing of Dutch, appear to have made it a sorry 
calling. Then, it is said, he borrowed, and again resorted to play, 
winning even largely, but losing all he won ; and it is at least 



chap, v.] PREPARING FOR A MEDICAL DEGREE. 37 

certain that lie encountered every form of distress. Unhappily, 
though he wrote many letters to Ireland, some of them described 
from recollection as compositions of singular ease and humour, all 
are lost. But Doctor Ellis, an Irish physician of eminence and 
ex-student of Ley den, remembered his fellow-student when years 
had made him famous, and said (much, it may be confessed, in 
the tone of ex-post-facto prophecy) that in all his peculiarities it 
was remarked there was about him an elevation of mind, a philo- 
sophical tone and manner, and the language and information of a 
scholar. Being much in want of the philosophy, it is well that his 
friends should have given him credit for it ; though his last known 
scene in Leyden showed greatly less of the philosophic mind than 
of the gentle, grateful heart. Bent upon leaving that city, where 
he had now been nearly a year without an effort for a degree, he 
called upon Ellis, and asked his assistance in some trifling sum. 
It was given ; but, as his evil, or (some might say) his good genius 
would have it, he passed a florist's garden on his return, and 
seeing some rare and high-priced flowers which his uncle Contarine, 
an enthusiast in such things, had often spoken and long been in 
search of, he ran in without other thought than of immediate 
pleasure to his kindest friend, bought a parcel of the roots, and 
sent them off to Ireland. He left Leyden next day, with a guinea 
in his pocket, one shirt to his back, and a flute in his hand. 



CHAPTER V. 



TRAVELS. 1755—1756. 

To understand what was probably passing in Goldsmith's mind 
at this curious point of his fortunes when, without any 
settled prospect in life, and devoid even of all apparent ™ , ^7 
means of self-support, he quitted Leyden, the Enquiry into 
the Present State of Polite Learning, the first literary piece which a 
few years afterwards he published on his own account, will in some 
degree serve as a guide. The Danish writer, Baron de Holberg, 
was much talked of at this time, as a celebrated person recently 
dead. His career impressed Goldsmith. It was that of a man of 
obscure origin, to whom literature, other sources having failed, 
had given great fame and high worldly station. On the death of 
his father, Holberg had found himself involved "in all that dis- 
tress which is common among the poor, and of which the great 
"have scarcely any idea." But persisting in a determination to 



38 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. ■ [book r. 

be something, he resolutely begged his learning and bis bread, and 
so succeeded that "a life begun in contempt and penury ended in 
"opulence and esteem." Goldsmith had his thoughts more espe- 
cially fixed upon this career, when at Leyden, by the accident of 
its sudden close in that city. The desire of extensive travel, too, 
his sister told Mr. Handcock, had been always a kind of passion 
with him. " Being of a philosophical turn," says his later associate 
and friend, Doctor Glover, "and at that time possessing a body 
" capable of sustaining every fatigue, and a heart not easily terrified 
"at danger, this ingenious, unfortunate man became an enthusiast 
"to the design he had formed of seeing the manners of different 
"countries." And an enthusiast to the same design, with pre- 
cisely the same means of indulging it, Holberg had also been. 
" His ambition," I turn again to the Polite Learning, " was not to 
"be restrained, or his thirst of knowledge satisfied, until he had 
"seen the world. Without money, recommendations, or friends, 
"he undertook to set out upon his travels, and make the tour of 
"Europe on foot. A good voice, and a trifling skill in music, 
"were the only finances he had to support an undertaking so 
" extensive ; so he travelled by day, and at night sung at the 
' ' doors of peasants ' houses to get himself a lodging. In this 
"manner, while yet very young, Holberg passed through France, 
"Germany, and Holland." With exactly the same resources, still 
also very young, Goldsmith quitted Leyden, bent upon the travel 
which his Traveller has made immortal. 

It was in February, 1755. For the exact route he took, the 
nature of his adventures, and the course of thought they suggested, 
it is necessary to resort for the most part to his published 
writings. His letters of the time have perished. It was common 
talk at the dinner table of Reynolds that the wanderings of the 
philosophic vagabond in the Vicar of Wakefield had been suggested 
by his own, and he often admitted at that time, to various friends, 
the accuracy of special details. "He frequently used to talk," 
says Foote's biographer Mr. Cooke, who became very familiar 
with Goldsmith in later life, ' ' of his distresses on the continent, 
' ' such as living on the hospitalities of the friars in convents, 
" sleeping in barns, and picking up a kind of mendicant livelihood 
"by the German flute, with great pleasantry." If he did not 
make more open confession than to private friends, it was to 
please the booksellers only ; who could not bear that any one so 
popular with their customers as Doctor Goldsmith had become, 
should lie under the horrible imputation of a poverty so deplorable. 
"Countries wear very different appearances," he had written in 
the first edition of the Polite Learning, "to travellers of different 
" circumstances. A man who is whirled through Europe in a 



-hap. v.] TRAVELS. 39 

' ' post-chaise, and the pilgrim who walks the grand tour on foot, 
"will form very different conclusions. Haud inexpertus loquor." 
In the second edition, the haud inexpertus loquor disappeared ; 
but the experience had been already set down in the Vicar of 
Wakefield. 

Louvain attracted him of course, as he passed through Flanders ; 
and here, according to his first biographer, he took the degree of 
medical bachelor, which, as early as 1763, is found in one of the 
Dodsley agreements appended to his name. Though this is by no 
means certain, it is yet likely enough. The records of Louvain 
University were destroyed in the revolutionary wars, and the 
means of proof or disproof lost ; but it is improbable that any false 
assumption of a medical degree would have passed without question 
among the distinguished friends of his later life, even if it escaped 
the exposure of his enemies. Certain it is, at any rate, that he 
made some stay at Louvain, became acquainted with its professors, 
and informed himself of its modes of study. " I always forgot 
■ ' the meanness of my circumstances when I could converse upon 
"such subjects." Some little time he also seems to have passed 
at Brussels. Of his having examined at Maestricht an extensive 
cavern, or stone quarry, at that time much visited by travellers, 
there is likewise trace. It must undoubtedly have been at 
Antwerp (a ' ' fortification in Flanders ") that he saw the maimed, 
deformed, chained, yet cheerful slave, to whom he refers in that 
charming essay, in the second number of the Bee, wherein he 
argues that happiness and pleasure are in ourselves, and not in the 
objects offered for our amusement. And he afterwards remem- 
bered, and made it the subject of a striking allusion in his 
Animated Nature, how, as he approached the coast of Holland, he 
looked down upon it from the deck, as into a valley ; so that it 
seemed to him at once a conquest from the sea, and in a manner 
rescued from its bosom. He did not travel to see that all was 
barren ; he did not merely outface the poverty, the hardship, and 
fatigue, but made them his servants, and ministers to entertain- 
ment and wisdom. 

Before he passed through Flanders good use had been made of 
his iiute ; and when he came to the poorer provinces of France, 
he found it greatly serviceable. ' 1 1 had some knowledge of 
"music," says the vagabond, "with a tolerable voice; I now 
" turned what was once my amusement into a present means of 
"subsistence. I passed among the harmless peasants of Flanders, 
" and among such of the French as were poor enough to be very 
' ' merry ; for I ever found them sprightly in proportion to their 
" wants. Whenever I approached a peasant's house towards night- 
' ' fall, I played one of my most merry tunes, and that procured 



40 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book r. 

' ' me not only a lodging, hut subsistence for the next day. I once 
' ' or twice attempted to play for people of fashion ; but they 
"always thought my performance odious, and never rewarded me 
' ' even with a trifle. V In plain words, he begged, as Holberg had 
done ; supported by his cheerful spirit, and the thought that 
Holberg's better fate might also yet be his. Not, we may be sure, 
the dull round of professional labour, but intellectual distinction, 
popular fame, the applause and wonder of his old Irish associates, 
were now within the sphere of Goldsmith's vision ; and what these 
will enable a man joyfully to endure, he afterwards bore witness 
to. ' ' The perspective of life brightens upon us when terminated 
"by objects so charming. Every intermediate image of want, 
" banishment, or sorrow, receives a lustre from their distant 
" influence. With these in view, the patriot, philosopher, and 
"poet, have looked with calmness on disgrace and famine, and 
" rested on their straw with cheerful serenity." Straw, doubtless, 
was his own peasant-lodging often ; but from it the wanderer 
arose, refreshed and hopeful, and bade the melody and sport 
resume, and played with a new delight to the music of enchanting 
verse already dancing in his brain. 

Gay sprightly land of mirth and social ease, 

Pleas' d with thyself, whom all the world can please, 

How often have I led thy sportive choir, 

With tuneless pipe, beside the murmuring Loire, 

"Where shading elms along the margin grew, 

And, freshen' d from the wave, the zephyr flew ! 

And haply, though my harsh touch, faltering still, 

But mock'd all tune, and marr'd the dancer's skill, 

Yet would the village praise my wondrous power, 

And dance, forgetful of the noon-tide hour. 

Alike all ages : dames of ancient days 

Have led their children through the mirthful maze ; 

And the gay grandsife, skill' d in gestic lore, 

Has frisk' d beneath the burden of threescore. 

So bless' d a life these thoughtless realms display ; 

Thus idly busy rolls their world away. 

Theirs are those arts that mind to mind endear, 

For honour forms the social temper here : 

Honour, that praise which real merit gains, 

Or e'en imaginary worth obtains, 

Here passes current — paid from hand to hand, 

It shifts, in splendid traffic, round the land ; 

From courts to camps, to cottages it strays, 

And all are taught an avarice of praise : 

They please, are pleas' d, they give to get esteem, 

Till, seeming bless' d, they grow to what they seem. 

Arrived in Paris, he rested some brief space, and, for the time, 
a sensible improvement is to be observed in his resources. This is 



chap, v.] TRAVELS. 41 

not easily explained ; for, as will appear a little later in our 
history, many applications to Ireland of this date remained 
altogether without answer, and a sad fate had fallen suddenly on 
Ms best friend. But in subsequent communication with his 
brother-in-law Hodson, he remarked, with that strange indifference 
to what was implied in such obligations which is not the agreeable 
side of his character, that there was hardly a kingdom in Europe 
in which he was not a debtor ; and in Paris, if anywhere, he 
would find many hearts made liberal by the love of learning. His 
early memoir- writers assert with confidence, that in at least some 
small portion of these travels he acted as companion to a young 
man of large fortune (nephew to a pawnbroker, and articled-clerk 
to an attorney) ; and there are passages in the philosophic vaga- 
bond's adventures, which, if they did not themselves suggest the 
assertion (as they certainly supply the language) of those first 
biographers, would tend to bear it out. " I was to be the young 
"gentleman's governor, with a proviso that he should always be 
"permitted to govern himself. He was heir to a fortune of two 
" hundred thousand pounds, left him by an uncle in the West 
" Indies ; and all his questions on the road were, how much 
"money could be saved. Such curiosities as could be seen for 
" nothing, he was ready enough to look at ; but if the sight of 
"them was to be paid for, he usually asserted that he had been 
"told they were not worth seeing ; and he never paid a bill that 
"he would not observe how amazingly expensive travelling 
"was." 

Poor Goldsmith could not have profited much by so thrifty a 
young gentleman, but he certainly seems to have been present, 
whether as a student or a mere visitor, at the fashionable 
chemical lectures of the day ("I have seen as bright a circle of 
" beauty at the chemical lectures of Rouelle as gracing the court 
"at Versailles") ; to have seen and admired the celebrated actress 
Mademoiselle Clairon (of whom he speaks in an essay at the close 
of the second number of the Bee) ; and to have had leisure to look 
quietly around him, and form certain grave and settled conclu- 
sions on the political and social state of France. He says, in his 
Animated Nature, that he never walked about the environs of 
Paris that he did not look upon the immense quantity of game 
running almost tame on every side of him, as a badge of the 
slavery of the people. What they wished him to observe as an 
object of triumph, he added, he regarded with a secret dread and 
compassion. Nor was it the badge of slavery that had alone 
arrested his attention. If on every side he saw this, he saw 
liberty at but a little distance beyond ; and in the fifty-sixth letter of 
the Citizen of the World, more than ten years before the Animated 



42 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i. 

Nature was written, he predicted, in words that are really very- 
remarkable, the issue which was so terrible and yet so glorious. 
This remark alone would reveal to us the kind of advantage 
derived by Goldsmith from the rude, strange, wandering life to 
which his nature for a time impelled him. It was the education 
thus picked up from personal experience, and by actual collision 
with many varieties of men, which not only placed him greatly in 
advance on several social questions, but occasionally gave him 
much the advantage over the more educated and learned of his 
contemporaries, and made him a Citizen of the World. "As 
" the Swedes are making concealed approaches to despotism, the 
' l French, on the other hand, are imperceptibly vindicating them- 
" selves into freedom. When I consider that those parliaments 
" (the members of which are all created by the court, the presi- 
" dents of which can only act by immediate direction) presume 
"even to mention privileges and freedom, who, till of late, re- 
' ' ceived directions from the throne with implicit humility ; when 
"this is considered, I cannot help fancying that the genius of 
"freedom has entered that kingdom in disguise. If they have 
" but three weak monarchs more successively on the throne, the 
"mask will be laid aside, and the country will certainly once 
■ ' more be free. " Some thirty years after this was written, and when 
the writer had been fifteen years in his grave, the crash of the 
falling Bastille resounded over Europe. 

Before Goldsmith quitted Paris, he is said by his biographers 
to have seen and become known to Voltaire. But at Paris this 
could not have been. The great wit was then self-exiled from the 
capital, which he had not seen from the luckless hour in which he 
accepted the invitation 'of Frederick of Prussia. The fact is 
alleged, it is quite true, on Goldsmith's own authority ; but the 
passage is loosely written, does not appear in a work which bore 
the writer's name, and may either have been tampered with by 
others, or even mistakenly set down by himself in confusion of 
memory. The error does not vitiate the statement in an integral 
point, since it can hardly be doubted, I think, that the meeting 
actually took place. The time when Goldsmith passed through 
the Genevese territory, is the time when Voltaire had settled 
himself, in greater quiet than he had known for years, in his newly- 
purchased house of Les Delices, his first residence in Geneva. He 
is, in a certain sort, admitted president of the Eiuopean intellectual 
republic ; and, from his president's chair, is laughing at his own 
follies, laughing heartily at the kings of his acquaintance, par- 
ticularly and loudly laughing at Frederick and his " (Euvres des 
* ' Poeshies. " It is the time of all others when, according to his own 
letters, he is resolved to have, on -every occasion and in every shape, 



TRAVELS. 



43 



" the society of agreeable and clever people." Goldsmith, flute in 
hand, or Goldsmith, learned and poor companion to a rich young 
fool, — Goldsmith, in whatever character, yearning to literature, its 
fame, and its awe-inspiring professors, — would not find himself 
near Les Delices without finding also easy passage to its illustrious 
owner. By whatever chance or design, there at any rate he seems 
to have been. A large party was present, and conversation turned 
upon the English ; of whom, as he afterwards observed in a letter 
to the Public Ledger, Goldsmith recollected Yoltaire to have 
remarked, that at the battle of Dettingen they exhibited prodigies 
of valour, but lessened their well-bought conquest by lessening the 
merit of those they had conquered. 

In a Life of Voltaire afterwards begun, but not finished, in one 
of the magazines of the day, he recalled this conversation in greater 
detail, to illustrate the general manner of the famous Frenchman. 
" When he was warmed in discourse, and had got over a hesitating 
" manner which sometimes he was subject to, it was rapture to 
f. hear him. His meagre visage seemed insensibly to gather beauty, 




" every muscle in it had meaning, and his eye beamed with unusual 
"brightness." Among the persons alleged to be present, though 
this might be open to question if anything of great strictness were 
involved, the names are used of the vivid and noble talker, Diderot, 
and of Fontenelle, then on the verge of the grave that waited for 



44 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i 

him nigh a hundred years. The last, Goldsmith says, reviled the 
English in everything ; the first, with unequal ability, defended 
them ; and, to the surprise of all, Voltaire long continued silent. 
At last he was roused from his reverie ; a new life pervaded his 
frame ; he flung himself into an animated defence of England ; 
strokes of the finest raillery fell thick and fast on his antagonist ; 
and he spoke almost without intermission for three hours. " I 
"never was so much charmed," he added, "nor did I ever 
" remember so absolute a victory as he gained in this dispute." 

Here Goldsmith was a worshipper at the footstool, and Voltaire 
was on the throne ; yet it is possible that when the great Frenchman 
heard in later years tlje name of the celebrated Englishman, he 
may have remembered this night at Les Delices, and the enthusiasm 
of his young admirer, — he may have recalled, with a smile for its 
fervent zeal, the pale, somewhat sad face, with its two great 
wrinkles between the eyebrows, but redeemed from ugliness or 
contempt by its kind expression of simplicity, as his own was by 
its wonderful intellect and look of unutterable mockery. For though 
when they met, Voltaire was upwards of sixty-one, and Goldsmith 
not twenty-seven, it happened that when (in 1778) the Frenchman's 
popularity returned, and all the fashion and intellect of Paris were 
again at the feet of the philosopher of Ferney ; the Johnsons, 
Burkes, Gibbons, Warfcons, Sheridans, and Reynoldses of England 
were discussing the inscription for the marble tomb of the author 
of the Vicar of Wakefield. 

The lecture rooms of Germany are so often referred to in his 
prose writings, that, as he passed to Switzerland, he must have 
taken them in his way. In the Polite Learning, one is painted 
admirably : its Nego, Probo, and Distinguo, growing gradually 
loud till denial, approval, and distinction are altogether lost ; till 
disputants grow warm, moderator is unheard, audience take part 
in the debate, and the whole hall buzzes with false philosophy, 
sophistry, and error. Passing into Switzerland, he saw Schaff- 
hausen frozen quite across, and the water standing in columns where 
the cataract had formerly fallen. His Animated Nature, in which 
this is noticed, contains also masterly descriptions, from his own 
experience, of the wonders that present themselves to the traveller 
over lofty mountains ; and he adds that " nothing can be finer or 
"more exact than Mr. Pope's description of a traveller straining 
" up the Alps." Geneva was his resting-place in Switzerland : but 
he visited Basle and Berne ; ate a " savoury" dinner on the top of 
the Alps ; flushed woodcocks on Mount Jura ; wondered to see 
the sheep in the valleys, as he had read of them in the old pastoral 
poets, following the sound of the shepherd's pipe of reed ; and, poet 
himself at last, sent off to his brother Henry the first sketch of what 



chap, v.] TRAVELS. 45 

was afterwards expanded into the Traveller. Who can doubt that 
it would contain the germ of these exquisite lines ? — ■ 

Eternal blessings crown my earliest friend, 

And ronnd his dwelling guardian saints attend . 

Bless' d be that spot, where cheerful guests retire 

To pause from toil, and trim their evening fire ; 

Bless' d that abode, where want and pain repair 

And every stranger finds a ready chair ; 

Bless'd be those feasts, with simple plenty crown'd, 

Where all the ruddy family around 

Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail, 

Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale, 

Or press the bashful stranger to his food, 

And learn the luxury of doing good. 

Remembering thus his brother's humble kindly life, he had set 
in pleasant contrast before him the weak luxuriance of Italy, and 
the sturdy enjoyment of the rude Swiss home. Observe in this 
following passage with what an exquisite art of artlessness, if I 
may so speak, an unstudied character is given to the verses by the 
recurring sounds in the rhymes ; by the turn that is given to 
particular words and their repetition ; and by the personal feeling, 
the natural human pathos, which invests the lines with a charm so 
rarely imparted to mere descriptive verse. 

My soul, turn from them, turn we to survey 

Where rougher climes a nobler race display — 

Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansions tread, 

And force a churlish soil for scanty bread. 

No product here the barren hills afford, 

But man and steel, the soldier and his sword ; 

No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array, 

But winter lingering chills the lap of May ; 

No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast, 

But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest. 

Yet still, even here, content can spread a charm, 

Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm. 

Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts though small, 

He sees his little lot the lot of all ; 

Sees no contiguous palace rear its head 

To shame the meanness of his humble shed ; 

No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal 

To make him loathe his vegetable meal ; 

But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil, 

Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil. 

Cheerful at morn he wakes from short repose, 

Breasts the keen air, and carols as he goes ; 

With patient angle trolls the finny deep ; 

Or drives his venturous plough-share to the steep ; 

Or seeks the den where snow-tracks mark the way,, 

And drags the struggling savage into day. 



4o OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AXD TIMES. [book :. 

At night returning, every labour sped, 
He sits him down the monarch of a shed ; 
Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys 
His children's looks that brighten at the blaze — 
While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard. 
Displays her cleanly platter on the board : 
And haply too some pilgrim, thither led, 
"With many a tale repays the nightly bed. 

Such was the education of thought and heart now taking the 
place of a inore learned discipline in the truant wanderer ; such 
the wider range of sympathies and enjoyment opening out upon 
his view ; such the larger knowledge that awakened in him, as the 
subtle perceptions of genius arose. More than ever was he here, 
in the practical paths of life, a loiterer and laggard ; yet as he 
passed from place to place, finding for his foot no solid resting- 
ground, no spot of all the world that he might hope to call his 
own, there was yet sinking deep into the heart of the homeless 
vagrant that power and possession to which all else on earth 
subserves and is obedient, and which out of the very abyss of 
poverty and want gave him a right and title over all. 

For me your tributary stores combine ; 
Creation's heir, the world, the world is mine ! 

Descending into Piedmont he observed the floating bee-houses of 
which he speaks so pleasantly in the Animated Nature. ' ' As the 
"bees are continually choosing their flowery pasture along the 
" banks of the stream, they are furnished with sweets before 
"unrifled ; and thus a single floating bee-house yields the proprietor 
" a considerable income. Why a method similar to this has never 
" been adopted in England, where we have more gentle rivers, and 
" more flowery banks, than any other part of the world, I know 
"not." After this, proofs of his having seen Florence, Verona, 
Mantua, and Milan, are apparent ; and in Carinthia the incident 
occurred with which his famous couplet has too hastily reproached 
a people, when, sinking with fatigue, after a long day's toilsome 
walk, he was turned from a peasant's hut at which he implored a 
lodging. At Padua he is supposed to have stayed some six 
months ; and here, it has been asserted, though in this case also 
the official records are lost, he received his degree. Here, or at 
Louvain, or at some other of these foreign universities where he 
always boasted himself hero in the disputations to which his 
philosophic vagabond refers, there can hardly be a question that the 
degree, a very simple and accessible matter at any of them, was 
actually conferred. "Sir," said Boswell to Johnson, "he disputed 
"his passage through Europe." Of his having also taken a some- 



chap, vl] TRAVELS. 47 

what close survey of those countless academic institutions of Italy, 
in the midst of which Italian learning at this time withered, 
evidence is not wanting ; and he always thoroughly discriminated 
the character of that country and its people. 

But small the bliss that sense alone bestows, 
And sensual bliss is all the nation knows ; 
In florid beauty groves and fields appear — 
Man seems the only growth that dwindles here ! 
Contrasted faults through all his manners reign : 
Though poor, luxurious ; though submissive, vain ; 
Though grave, yet trifling ; zealous, yet untrue ; 
And even in penance planning sins anew. 

Tt is a hard struggle to return to England ; but his steps are now 
bent that way. " My skill in music," says the philosophic 
vagabond, whose account there will be little danger in 7p t 2 "s 
accepting as at least some certain reflection of the truth, 
"could avail me nothing in Italy, where every peasant was a 
" better musician than I : but by this time I had acquired another 
" talent which answered my purpose as well, and this was a skill 
" in disputation. In all the foreign universities and convents there 
"are, upon certain days, philosophical theses maintained against 
" every adventitious disputant ; for which, if the champion opposes 
"with any dexterity, he can claim a gratuity in money, a dinner, 
" and a bed for one night. In this manner, then, I fought my 
" way towards England ; walked along from city to city ; examined 
"mankind more nearly; and, if I may so express it, saw both 
' c sides of the picture. " 



CHAPTEE VI. 



1756. 
Mt. 28. 



PECKHAM SCHOOL AND GRUB-STREET. 1756—1757. 

It was on the 1st of February, 1756, that Oliver Goldsmith 
stepped upon the shore at Dover, and stood again among 
his countrymen. 

Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state, 
With daring aims irregularly great. 
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, 
I see the lords of human kind pass by, 
Intent on high designs. . . . 

The comfort of seeing it must have been about all the comfort to 
him. At this moment, there is little doubt, he had not a single 



48 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. 



[book I. 



farthing in his pocket ; and from the lords of human kind, intent 
on looking in any direction but his, it was much more difficult to 
get one than from the careless good-humoured peasants of France 
or Flanders. In the struggle of ten days or a fortnight which it 
took him to get to London, there is reason to suspect that he 
attempted a "low comedy" performance in a country barn ; and, 
at one of the towns he passed, had implored to be hired in an 
apothecary's shop. In the middle of February he was wandering 
without friend or acquaintance, without the knowledge or comfort 
of even one kind face, in the lonely, terrible, London streets. 




He thought he might find employment as an usher : and there 
is a dark uncertain kind of story, of his getting a bare subsistence 
in this way for some few months, under a feigned name ; which must 
have involved him in a worse distress but for the judicious silence 
of the Dublin Doctor (Radcliff), fellow of the college and joint - 
tutor with Wilder, to whom he had been suddenly required to 
apply for a character, and whose good-humoured acquiescence in 
his private appeal saved him from suspicion of imposture. 
Goldsmith showed his gratitude by a long, and, it is said, a most 
delightful letter to Radcliff, descriptive of his travels ; now unhap- 
pily destroyed. He also wrote again to his more familiar Irish 



chap, vi.] PECKHAM SCHOOL AND GRUB-STREET. 49 

friends, but his letters were again unanswered. He went among 
the London apothecaries, and asked them to let him spread 
plasters for them, pound in their mortars, run with their medi- 
cines : but they, too, asked him for a character, and he had none 
to give. At last a chemist of the name of Jacob took compassion 
upon him, and the late Conversation Sharp used to point out a 
shop at the corner of Monument-yard on Fish-street-hill, shown to 
him in his youth as this benevolent Mr. Jacob's. Some dozen 
years later, Goldsmith startled a brilliant circle at Bennet 
Langton's with an anecdote of " When I lived among the 
- beggars in Axe-lane," just as Napoleon, fifty years later, appalled 
the party of crowned heads at Dresden with his story of "When 
"I was lieutenant in the regiment of La Fere." The experience 
with the beggars will of course date before that social elevation 
of mixing and selling drugs on Fish-street-hill. For doubtless the 
latter brought him into the comfort and good society on which he 
afterwards dwelt with such unction, in describing the elegant little 
lodging at three shillings a week, with its lukewarm dinner served 
up between two pewter plates from a cook's shop. 

Thus employed among the drugs, he heard one day that Sleigh, 
an old fellow-student of the Edinburgh time, was lodging 
not far off, and he resolved to visit him. He had to wait, m/ 09 
of course, for his only holiday ; "but notwithstanding it 
"was Sunday," he said, afterwards relating the anecdote, "and it is 
"to be supposed I was in my best clothes, Sleigh did not know 
"me. Such is the tax the unfortunate pay to poverty." He did 
not fail to leave to the unfortunate the lessons they should be 
taught by it. Doctor Sleigh (Foote's Doctor Sligo, honourably 
named in an earlier page of this narrative) recollected at last his 
friend of two years gone ; and when he did so, added Goldsmith, 
" I found his heart as warm as ever, and he shared his purse and 
" friendship with me during his continuance in London." With 
the help of this warm heart and friendly purse, seconded also by 
the good apothecary Jacob ("who," says Cooke, "saw in Goldsmith 
"talents above his condition"), he now "rose from the apothecary's 
"drudge to be a physician in a humble way," in Bankside, South- 
ward It was not a thriving business : poor physician to the poor : 
but it seemed a change for the better, and hope was strong 
in him. 

An old Irish acquaintance and school-fellow (Beatty) met him at 
this time in the streets. He was in a suit of green and gold, 
miserably old and tarnished ; his shirt and neckcloth appeared to 
have been worn at least a fortnight ; but he said he was practising 
physic, and doing very well ! It is hard to confess failure to one's 
3chool-fellow. 

D 



50 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. 



[book I. 



Our next glimpse, though not more satisfactory, is more profes- 
sional. The green and gold have faded quite out, into a rusty 
full-trimmed black suit : the pockets of which, like those of the 
poets in innumerable farces, overflow with papers. The coat is 
second-hand velvet, cast-off legacy of a more successful brother of 
the craft ; the cane, the wig, have served more fortunate owners ; 
and the humble practitioner of Bankside is feeling the pulse of a 




patient humbler than himself, whose courteous entreaties to be 
allowed to relieve him of the hat he keeps pressed over his heart, 
he more courteously but firmly declines. Beneath the hat is a 
large patch in the rusty velvet, which he thus conceals. 

But he cannot conceal the starvation which is again impending. I 
Even the poor printer's workman he attends, can see how hardly 
in that respect it goes with him ; and finds courage one day to 
suggest that his master has been kind to clever men before now, 
has visited Mr. Johnson in spunging-houses, and might be service- 
able to a poor physcian. For his master is no less than Mr. Samuel 
Richardson of Salisbury- court and Parson' s-green, printer, and 
author of Clarissa. The hint is successful ; and Goldsmith, 
appointed reader and corrector to the press in Salisbury-court, — 
admitted, now and then even to the parlour of Richardson himself. 






chap, vi.] PECKHAM SCHOOL AND GRUB-STREET. 51 

and there grimly smiled upon by its chief literary ornament, great 
poet of the day, the author of the Night Thoughts, — sees hope in 
literature once more. He begins a tragedy. With what modest 
expectation, with what cheerful, simple-hearted deference to criti- 
cal objection, another of his Edinburgh fellow-students, Doctor 
Fair, will relate to us. 



\ 

aurVh 



From the time of Goldsmith's leaving Edinburgh, in the year 1754, I 
never saw him till 1756, when I was in London, attending the hospitals 
and lectures; early in January [1756 is an evident mistake for 1757] he 
called upon me one morning before I was up, and on my entering the room, 
I recognised my old acquaintance, dressed in a rusty full-trimmed black suit, 
with his pockets full of papers, which instantly reminded me of the poet in 
Garrick's farce of Lethe. After we had finished our breakfast, he drew from 
his pocket a part of a tragedy ; which he said he had brought for my correc- 
tion ; in vain I pleaded inability, when he began to read, and every part on 
which I expressed a doubt as to the propriety, was immediately blotted out. 
I then more earnestly pressed him not to trust to my judgment, but to the 
opinion of persons better qualified to decide on dramatic compositions, on 
which he told me he had submitted his production, so far as he had written, 
to Mr. Richardson, the author of Clarissa, on which I peremptorily declined 
offering another criticism on the performance. The name and subject of the 
tragedy have unfortunately escaped my memory, neither do I recollect with 
exactness how much he had written, though I am inclined to believe that he 
had not completed the third act ; I never heard whether he afterwards 
finished it. In this visit I remember bis relating a strange Quixotic scheme 
he had in contemplation of going to decipher the inscriptions on the written 
mountains, though he was altogether ignorant of Arabic, or the language 
in which they might be supposed to be written. The salary of 300Z. per 
annum, which had been left for the purpose, was the temptation ! 

Temptation indeed ! The head may well be full of projects of any 
kind, when the pockets are only full of papers. But not, alas, to 
decipher inscriptions on the written mountains, only to preside 
over pot-hooks at Peckham, was doomed to be the lot of 
Goldsmith. One Doctor Milner, known still as the author of 
Latin and Greek grammars useful in their day, kept a school 
there ; his son was among these young Edinburgh fellow-students 

I with Oliver, come up, like Farr, Sleigh, and others, to their 

i London examinations ; and thus it happened that the office of 
assistant at the Peckham Academy befell. ' l All my ambition 

I "now is to live," he may well be supposed to have said, in the 
words he afterwards placed in the mouth of young Primrose. He 
seems to have been installed at nearly the beginning of 1757. Ad 
attempt has been made to show that it was an earlier year, but on 

| grounds too unsafe to oppose to known dates in his life. The 
good people of Peckham have also cherished traditions of Goldsmith 

^ House, as what once was the school became afterwards fondly 
designated ; which may not safely be admitted here. Broken 

| window panes have been religiously kept, for the supposed treasure 

D2 



52 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i. 

of his hand-writing ; and old gentlemen, formerly Doctor Milner's 
scholars, have claimed, against every reasonable evidence, the 
honour of having been whipped by the author of the Vicar of 
Wakefield. But nothing is with certainty known, save what 
a daughter of the school-master has related. 

At the end of the century Miss Hester Milner, ' ' an intelligent 
"lady, the youngest, and only remaining of Doctor Milner's ten 
"daughters," was still alive, and very willing to tell what she 
recollected of their old usher. An answer he had given herself one 
day to a question which, as it interested her youth, had happily 
not ceased to occupy and interest her old age, seemed to have 
retained all the strong impression which it first made upon her. 
Her father being a presbyterian divine, she could hardly fail to 
hear many arguments and differences in doctrine or dogma 
discussed ; and, in connection with these, it seems to have occur- 
red to her one day to ask Mr. Goldsmith what particular commen- 
tator on the Scriptures he would recommend ; when, after a pause, 
the usher replied, with much earnestness, that in his belief 
common-sense was the best interpreter of the sacred writings. 

What other reminiscences she indulged took a lighter and 
indeed humourous tone. He was very good-natured, she said ; 
played all kinds of tricks on the servants and the boys, of which 
he had no lack of return in kind ; told entertaining stories ; ' l was 
"remarkably cheerful, both in the family and with the young 
" gentlemen of the school ;" and amused everybody with his flute. 
Two of his practical jokes on Doctor Milner's servant, or footboy, 
were thought worth putting in a notebook by a neighbour of Miss 
Milner's at Islington, to whom she related them. This was the 
popular Baptist preacher and schoolmaster, Mr. John Evans, 
already known as the author of A Brief Sketch of the Denomina- 
tions, and afterwards more widely distinguished. Thinking that 
the old lady's recollections somewhat pleasantly illustrated the 
"humour and cheerfulness of Goldsmith," he was careful, after 
"receiving them from Miss Milner on drinking tea with her," 
to write ^hem down immediately on his return home. And 
as even biography has its critics jealous for its due and proper 
dignity, the present writer had perhaps better anticipate a possible 
objection to these and other anecdotes which in this narrative will 
first be read, by pleading also the apology of Miss Milner's friend, 
that "however trivial they may be, there are some young persons 
"to whom they may prove acceptable." 

William was the name of the schoolmaster's servant, and his 
duty being to wait on the young gentlemen at table, clean their 
shoes, and so forth, he was not, in social position, so very far 
removed from the usher but that much familiarity subsisted be- 



chap, vi.] PECKHAM SCHOOL AND GRUB-STREET, 53 

tween them. He was weak, but good-tempered, and one of 
Goldsmith's jokes had for its object to cure him of a hopeless 
passion with which a pretty servant girl in the neighbourhood had 
inspired him. This youthful Phillis seems to have rather suddenly 
quitted service and gone back to her home in Yorkshire, leaving 
behind her a sort of half-promise that she would some day send 
William a letter ; which everybody, but William, of course knew 
was only her good-natured way of getting rid of importunity : he, 
however, having a fixed persuasion that the letter would come, 
every morning would watch the postman as he passed, and became 
at last so wretched with disappointment that Goldsmith good- 
naturedly devised an attempt to cure these unfounded expectations. 
In a servant-girl's hand elaborately imitated, and with such lan- 
guage and spelling as would exactly hit off the longed-for letter out 
of Yorkshire (" the lady who told me the anecdote," interposes the 
narrator, " saw it before it was sent "), Goldsmith prepared an 
epistle from Phillis which was to convey to William, in effect, that 
she had for various reasons delayed writing, but was now to inform 
him that a young man, by trade a glass-grinder, was paying his 
addresses to her, that she had not given him much encouragement 
but her relations were strongly for the match, that she, however, 
often thought of William, and must conclude by saying that some- 
thing must now be done one way or another, &c. &c. Properly 
sealed and directed, one of the young gentlemen had it in charge 
from Goldsmith to take in the letters on the postman's next visit, 
place this among them, and hand them all to the footboy ; " the 
" young gentlemen being in the habit of running towards the door, 
"whenever the postman made his appearance." Everything fell 
out as desired ; the letter was seized, read, and secreted by its 
supposed owner ; and though nothing was said of its contents to 
anybody, the fact of something having happened as plainly revealed 
itself in William's increased air of importance, as formerly was 
shadowed forth in the young lady of Mr. BickerstafFs acquaintance, 
who held up her head higher than ordinary from having on a pair of 
striped garters. Nevertheless, for the rest of the day, Goldsmith 
let the potion work which was to effect the cure ; and not tili 
night did he disturb it by the startling question, addressed to the 
servant-man on his walking into the kitchen, " So, William, you 
" have had a letter from Yorkshire ? Well, what does she say 
"to you? Come, now, tell me all about it." William recovered 
his surprise, confessed the letter, but would say nothing more. 
"Yes," nodding his head ; "but I shall not tell you, Mr. Gold- 
" smith, anything about it ; no, no, that will never do." "What, 
"nothing?" No. " Not if she says she'll marry you?" No. 
"Not if she has married anybody else?" No. 



54 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i. 

says Goldsmith, " suppose, William, I tell you what the contents 
" of the letter are. Come," he added, looking at a newspaper he 
held in his hand, " I will read you your letter just as I find it 
' ' here ; " and he read it accordingly, word for word, to his amazed 
listener, who at last cried out very angrily, "You use me very 
"ill, Mr. Goldsmith! you have opened my letter." The sequel 
was a full explanation by the good-natured usher, and such kindly 
advice not in future to expect any letter more real than that which 
had been written to cure him of his folly, that, according to Miss 
Milner, "poor William was then induced to believe it the wisest 
."way." 

This anecdote sufficiently implies that poor William had obstinate 
notions of his own, which it was not very easy to dissipate by or- 
dinary modes of persuasion. One of these, Miss Milner told our 
informant, was a preposterous estimate of his capacity to do 
astonishing things, which nobody else could attempt, in the eating 
and drinking way. The whole kitchen laughed at him ; but of I 
course refused to accept his challenge for a trial at some poisonous 
draught, or fare unfit for a Christian. They enlisted Goldsmith 
vat last, however, who, having promised to administer correction to 
this very eccentric vanity, thus commenced preparations. He pro- 
cured a piece of uncoloured Cheshire cheese, rolled it up in the 
form of a candle about an inch in length, and, twisting a bit of 
white paper to the size of a wick, and blacking its extremity, 
thrust it into one of the ends of the cheese, which he then put into 
a candlestick over the kitchen fireplace, taking care that in another, 
by the side of it, there should be placed the end of a real candle, 
in size and appearance exactly the same. Everything thus ready, 
in came William, and was straightway challenged by the usher to 
display what he had so often boasted of, in a trial with himself. 
" You eat yonder piece of candle," said he, taking down the cheese, 
"and I will eat this." William assented rather drily. "I have 
" no objection to begin," continued Goldsmith, "but both must 
"finish at the same time." William nodded, took his portion of 
candle, and, still reluctant, looked ruefully on with the other 
servants while Goldsmith began gnawing away at Ms supposed 
share, making terrible wry faces. With no heart or stomach for a 
like unsavoury meal, his adversary beheld with amazement the 
progress made, and not till Goldsmith had devoured all but the 
very last morsel, did he take sudden courage, open his mouth, and 
" fling his own piece down his throat in a moment." This had the 
seeming effect of a sudden triumph over the challenger, which 
made the kitchen ring with laughter ; and William, less distressed 
with his real sufferings, now that all was over, than elated by his 
fancied victory, took upon him to express sympathy for the 







chap, vi.] PECKHAM SCHOOL AND GRUB-STEEET. 55 

defeated usher, and really wondered why he had not, like himself, 
swallowed so nauseous a morsel all at once. "Why truly," replied 
the usher, with undisturbed gravity, " my bit of candle, William, 
"was no other than a bit of very nice Cheshire cheese, and 
"therefore, William, I was unwilling to lose the relish of it." 

Nor were these the only stories related of the obscure usher at 
Doctor Milner's school. Others were told, though less distinctly 
remembered, having less mirth and 
more pathos in their tone ; but the 
general picture conveyed by Miss 
Milner's recollections was that of a 
teacher as boyish as the boys he 
taught. With his small salary, it 
would seem, he was always in ad- 
vance. It went for the most part, 
Miss Milner said, on the day he re- 
ceived it, in relief to beggars, and in 
sweetmeats for the younger class. 
Her mother would observe to him at 
last: "You had better, Mr. Gold- 
' ' smith, let me keep your money for 
" you, as I do for some of the young 

"gentlemen :" to which he would good-humouredly answer, "In 
"truth, madam, there is equal need." 

All this, at the same time, is very evidently putting the best 
face upon the matter, as it was natural Miss Milner should. But 
in sober fact, and notwithstanding the tricks on William, not- 
withstanding these well-remembered childish or clownish games, 
and a certain cheerfulness of temper even in gravest things, it was 
Goldsmith's bitterest time," this Peckhain time. He could think 
in after years of his beggary, but not of his slavery, without shame. 
" Oh, that is all a holiday at Peckham," said an old friend very 
innocently one day, in a common proverbial phrase ; but Goldsmith 
reddened, and asked if he meant to affront him. Nor can we fail 
to recall the tone in which he afterwards alluded to this mode of 
life. When, two years later, he tried to persuade people that a 
schoolmaster was of more importance in the state than to be 
neglected and left to starve, he described what he had known too 
well. " The usher," he wrote, in the sixth number of the Bee, 
"'is generally the laughing-stock of the school. Every trick is 
"played upon him ; the oddity of his manners, his dress, or his 
"language, is a fund of eternal ridicule ; the master himself now 
" and then cannot avoid joining in the laugh, and the poor wretch, 
"eternally resenting this ill-usage, lives in a state of war with all 
"the family. This is a very proper person, 



56 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i. 

c ' children a relish for learning ? They must esteem learning very 
" much, when they see its professors used with such ceremony ! " 
So, too, and with more direct reason, was it understood to refer to 
the Peckham discomforts, when he talked of the poor usher 
obliged to sleep in the same bed with the French teacher, "who 
" disturbs him for an hour every night in papering and filleting his 
"hair ; and stinks worse than a carrion with his rancid pomatums, 
"when he lays his head beside him on the bolster." Who will 
not think, moreover, of George Primrose and his cousin? "Ay," 
cried he, " this is indeed a very pretty career that has been chalked 
" out for you. I have been an usher at a boarding-school myself ; 
" and may I die by an anodyne necklace, but I had rather be 
' ' under-turnkey in Newgate. I was up early and late : I was 
"browbeat by the master, hated for my ugly face by the mistress, 
"worried by the boys." Finally, in the only anecdote that rests 
on other safe authority than Miss Milner's, there is quite sufficient 
reason in fact, for adoption of the same tone. 

Mr. Samuel Bishop, whose sons have had distinction in the 
church, was a Peckham scholar, and the story is told as it was 
received from one of the sons. "When amusing his younger 
' ' companions during play-hours with the flute, and expatiating on 
' ' the pleasures derived from music, in addition to its advantages in 
" society as a gentlemanlike acquirement, a pert boy, looking at 
"his situation and personal disadvantages with something of 
" contempt, rudely replied to the effect that he surely could not 
" consider himself a gentleman : an offence which, though followed 
"by chastisement, disconcerted and pained him extremely." That 
the pain of this period of his life, which even at its time of pressure 
we have seen relieved by the love of jest and game, could also on 
occasion be forgotten in what a happy nature found better worth 
remembering, may be gathered from the same authority. When 
the despised usher was a celebrated man, young Bishop, walking 
in London with his newly-married wife, met his old teacher. 
Goldsmith recognised him instantly, as a lad he had been fond of 
at Peckham, and embraced him with delight. His joy increased 
when Mr. Bishop made known his wife ; but the introduction had 
not unsettled the child's image in the kind man's heart. It was 
still the boy before him ; still Master Bishop ; the lad he used to 
cram with fruit and sweetmeats, to the judicious horror of the 
Milners. "Come, my boy," he said, as his eye fell upon a basket- 
woman standing at the corner of the street, " come, Sam, I am 
"delighted to see you. I must treat you to something. What 
" shall it be ? Will you have some apples ? Sam," added Gold- 
smith, suddenly, "have you seen my picture by Sir Joshua 
"Reynolds ? Have you seen it, Sam 1 Have you got an engraving ? " 






chap, vi.] PECKHAM SCHOOL AND GRUB-STBEET. 57 

Not to appear negligent of the rising fame of his old preceptor, 
says the teller of the story, "my father replied that he had not 
"yet procured it ; he was just furnishing his house, but had fixed 
" upon the spot the print was to occupy as soon as he was ready to 
"receive it." "Sam," returned Goldsmith with some emotion, 
"if your picture had been published, I should not have waited an 
"hour without having it." 

; But let me not anticipate those better times. He was still the 
Peckham usher, and humble sitter at Doctor Milner's board, when 
it chanced that Griffiths the bookseller, who had started the Monthly 

\ Review eight years before, dined there one April day. Doctor 
Milner was one of his contributors ; there was opposition in the 
field ; Archibald Hamilton the bookseller, with the powerful aid of 
Smollett, had set afloat the Critical Review, — the talk of the table 
turned upon this, and some remarks by the usher attracted the 
attention of Griffiths. He took him aside : " Could he furnish a "few 

1 specimens of criticism ? " The offer was accepted, and afterwards 
the specimens ; and before the close of April, 1757, Goldsmith was 
bound by Griffiths in an agreement for one year. He was to leave 
Doctor Milner's, to board and lodge with the bookseller, to have a 
small regular salary, and to devote himself to the Monthly Review. 
One sees something like the transaction in the pleasant talk of 

I George Primrose. 

' Come, I see you are a lad of spirit and some learning, what do you think 

'of commencing author, like me ? You have read in books, no doubt, of men 

i ' of genius starving at the trade ; at present I'll show you forty very dull 

' fellows about town that live by it in opulence. All honest, jog-trot men, 

i 'who go on smoothly and dully, and write history and politics, and are 

i ' praised : men, sir, who, had they been bred cobblers, would all their lives 

'have only mended shoes, but never made them.' Finding that there was 

no great degree of gentility affixed to the character of an usher, I resolved to 

accept his proposal ; and having the highest respect for literature, hailed the 

antiqua mater of Grub-street with reverence. I thought it my glory to 

pursue a track which Dryden and Otway trod before me. 

The difference of fact and fiction here will be, that glory had 

nothing to do with the matter. Griffiths and glory were not to be 

thought of together. The sorrowful road seemed the last that was 

left to him ; and he entered it. 

On this track, then, — taken by few successfully, taken happily by 

few, though not on that account the less, in every age, the choice of 

men of genius, — we see Goldsmith, in his twenty-ninth year, without 

liberty of choice, in sheer and bare necessity, calling after calling 

I having slipped from him, launched for the first time. The prospect 

I of unusual gloom might have the ardour of a more damped cheerful 

adventurer. 

d 3 



58 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book i. 

Fielding had died in shattered hope and fortune, at what should 
have been his prime of life, three years before ; within the next 
two years, poor and mad, Collins was fated to descend to his early 
grave ; Smollett was toughly fighting for his every-day's existence ; 
and Johnson, within some half-dozen months, had been tenant of 
a spunging-house. No man throve that was connected with letters, 
unless he were also connected with their trade and merchandise, 
and, like Richardson, could print as well as write books. " Had 
" some of those," cried Smollett, in his bitterness, " who were pleased 
" to call themselves my friends, been at any pains to deserve the 
" character, and told me ingenuously what I had to expect in the 
" capacity of an author, when I first professed myself of that 
" venerable fraternity, I should in all probability have spared myself 
" the incredible labour and chagrin I have since undergone." " I 
" don't think," said Burke, in one of his first London letters to his 
Irish friends, written seven years before this date, "there is as 
" much respect paid to a man of letters on this side the water as 
" you imagine. I don't find that Genius, the 

'rathe primrose, which forsaken dies,' 

" is patronised by any of the nobility . . . writers of the first talents 
" are left to the capricious patronage of the public. After all, a 
' ' man will make more by the figures of arithmetic than the figures 
1 ' of rhetoric, unless he can get into the trade wind, and then he 
"may sail secure over Pactolean sands." 

It was, in truth, one of those times of transition which press 
hardly on all whose lot is cast in them. The patron was gone, and 
the public had not come ; the seller of books had as yet exclusive 
command over the destiny of those who wrote them, and he was 
difficult of access, — without certain prospect of the trade wind, 
hard to move. "The shepherd in Virgil" wrote Johnson to Lord 
Chesterfield, ' ' grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a 
"native of the rocks." Nor had adverse circumstances been 
without their effect upon the literary character itself. Covered 
with the blanket of Boyse, and sheltered by the night-cellar of 
Savage, it had forfeited less honour and self-respect than as the 
paid client of the ministries of Walpole and Henry Pelham. As 
long as its political services were acknowledged by offices in the 
state ; as long as the coarse wit of Prior could be paid by an 
embassy, or the delicate humour of Addison win its way to a 
secretaryship ; while Steele and Congreve, Swift and Gay, sat at 
ministers' tables, and were not without weight in cabinet councils ; 
its slavery might not have been less real than in later years, yet all 
externally went well with it. Though even flat apostacy, as in 
Parnell's case, might in those days lift literature in rank, while 



;hap. vi.] PECKHAM SCHOOL AND GRUB-STREET. 59 

unpurchaseable independence, as in that of De Foe, depressed it 
into contempt and ruin ; though, for the mere hope of gain to be 
got from it, such nobodies as Mr. Hughes were worth propitiating 
by dignified public employments ; still, it was esteemed by the 
crowd, because not wholly shut out from the rank and consideration 
which worldly means could give to it. " The middle ranks," said 
Goldsmith truly, in speaking of that period, ' ' generally imitate 
" the great, and applauded from fashion if not from feeling." But 
when another state of things succeeded ; when politicians had too 
much shrewdness to despise the helps of the pen, and too little intellect 
to honour its claims or influence ; when it was thought that to strike 
at its dignity, was to command its more complete subservience ; 
when corruption in its grosser forms had become chief director of 
political intrigue, and it was less the statesman's office to wheedle 
a vote than the minister's business to give hard cash in return for 
it, — literature, or the craft so called, was thrust from the house of 
commons into its lobbies and waiting-rooms, and ordered to exchange 
the dignity of the council-table for the comforts of the great man's 
kitchen. 

The order did not of necessity make the man of genius a servant 
or a parasite : its sentence upon him simply was, that he must 
descend in the social scale, and peradventure starve. But though 
it could not disgrace or degrade him, it ca]led a class of writers into 
existence whose degradation reacted upon him ; who flung a stigma 
on his pursuits, and made the name of man-of-letters the synonyme 
for dishonest hireling. Of the fifty thousand pounds which the 
Secret Committee found to have been expended by Walpole's 
ministry on daily scribblers for their daily bread, not a sixpence 
was received, either then or when the Pelhams afterwards followed 
the example, by a writer whose name is now enviably known. All 
went to the Guthries, the Amhersts, the Arnalls, the Ralphs, and 
the Oldmixons ; and while a Mr. Cook was pensioned, a Harry 
Fielding solicited Walpole in vain. AVhat the man of genius 
received, unless the man of rank had wisdom to adorn it by 
befriending him, was nothing but the shame of being confounded, 
as one who lived by using the pen, with those who lived by its 
prostitution and abuse. 

It was in vain he strove to escape this imputation : it increased, 
and it clove to him. To become author was to be treated as 
adventurer : a man had only to write, to be classed with what 
Johnson calls the lowest of all human beings, the scribbler for 
party. One of Fielding's remarks, under cover of a grave sneer, 
conveys a bitter sense of this injustice. " An author, in a country 
" where there is no public provision for men of genius, is not 
" obliged to be a more disinterested patriot than any other. "Why 



60 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. - l book i. 

"is lie, whose livelihood is in his pen, a greater monster in using 
"it to serve himself, than he who uses his tongue for the same 
"purpose?" Nor was the injustice the work of the vulgar or 
unthinking ; it was strongest in the greatest"- of living statesmen. 
If any one had told William Pitt that a new man of merit, called 
Goldsmith, was about to try the profession of literature, he would 
have turned aside in scorn. It had been sufficient to throw doubt 
upon the career of Edmund Burke, that, in this very year, he 
opened it with the writing of a book. It was Horace Walpole's 
vast surprise, four years later, that so sensible a man as "young 
" Mr. Burke should not have worn off his authorism yet. He 
" thinks there is nothing so charming as writers, and to be one. 
" He will know better one of these days." 

Such was the worldly account of literature, when, as I have said, 
deserted by the patron, and not yet supported by the public, it 
was committed to the mercies of the bookseller. They were few 
and rare. It was the mission of Johnson to extend them, and to 
replace the writer's craft, in even its worldliest view, on a dignified 
and honourable basis ; but Johnson's work was just begun. He 
was himself, as yet, one of the meaner workers for hire ; and 
though already author of the Dictionary, was too glad in this very 
year to have Robert Dodsley's guinea for writing paragraphs in 
the London Chronicle. " Had you, sir, been an author of the 
"lower class, one of those who are paid by the sheet," remonstrated 
worthy printer Bowyer with an author who could pay, who did not 
need to be paid, and who would not be trifled with by the man of 
types. Of the lower class, unlike that dignitary Mr. John 
Jackson, still was Samuel Johnson ; he was bat a Grub-street 
man, paid by the sheet, when Goldsmith entered Grub-street, 
periodical writer and reviewer. 

Periodicals were the fashion of the day. They were the means 
of those rapid returns, of that perpetual interchange of bargain and 
sale, so fondly cared for by the present arbiters of literature ; and 
were now, universally, the favourite channel of literary speculation. 
Scarcely a week passed in which a new magazine or paper did not 
start into life, to perish or survive as might be. Even Fielding 
had turned from his Jonathan Wild the Great, to his Jacobite's 
Journal and True Patriot ; and, from his Tom Jones and Amelia, 
sought refuge in his Covent Garden Journal. We have the names 
of fifty-five papers of the date of a few years before this, regularly 
published every week. A more important literary venture, in the 
nature of a review, and with a title expressive of the fate of letters, 
the Grub Street Journal, had been brought to a close in 1737. 
Six years earlier than that, for a longer life, Cave issued the first 
number of the Gentleman'' s Magazine. Griffiths, aided by Ralph, 



chap, vi.] PECKHAM SCHOOL AND GRUB-STREET. 61 

Kippis, Langhorne, Grainger, and others, followed with the earliest 
regular Review which can be said to have succeeded, and in 1749 
began, on whig principles, that publication of the Monthly which 
lasted till our own day. Seven years later, the tories opposed it 
with the Critical, which, with slight alteration of title, existed to 
a very recent date, more strongly tainted with high-church 
advocacy and quasi-popish principles than when the first number, 
sent forth under the editorship of Smollett in March 1756, was on 
those very grounds assailed. In the May of that year of 
Goldsmith's life to which I have now arrived, another Revietv, 
the Universal, began a short existence of three years, its prin- 
cipal contributor being Samuel Johnson, at this time wholly de- 
voted to it. 

Such were a few of the examples that, if the least liberty of 
choice had been his, might have raised or depressed the sanguine 
heart of Oliver Goldsmith, when, under the watchful eye of 
Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths, now providers of his bed. and board, he sat 
down in the bookseller's parlour in Paternoster-row somewhat 
sarcastically faced with the sign of The Dunciad, to begin his 
engagement on the Monthly Review. 



BOOK THE SECOND. 



CHAPTEE I. 



REVIEWING FOE MR. AND MRS. GRIFFITHS. 1757. 

The means of existence, long sought, seemed thus to be found, 
when, in his twenty-ninth year, Oliver Goldsmith sat 
down to the precarious task-work of Author by Profession. m, 09 
He had exerted no control over the circumstances in which 
he took up the pen : nor had any friendly external aid, in an 
impulse of kindness, offered it to his hand. To be swaddled, 
rocked, and dandled into authorship is the lot of more fortunate 
men : it was with Goldsmith the stern and last resource of his 
struggle with adversity. As in the country-barn he would have 
played Scrub or Richard ; as he prescribed for the poorer than him- 
self at Bankside, until worse than their necessities drove him to 
herd with the beggars in Axe-lane ; as in Salisbury-court he 
corrected the press among Mr. Richardson's workmen, on Tower- 
hill doled out physic over Mr. Jacob's counter, and at Peckham 
dispensed the more nauseating dose to young gentleman of Doctor 
Milner's academy : he had here entered into Mr. Grimths's service, 
and put on the livery of the Monthly Review. 

He was man-of-letters, then, at last ; but had gratified no 
passion, and attained no object of ambition. The hope of great- 
ness and distinction, day-star of his wanderings and his privations, 
was at this hour, more than it had ever been, dim, distant, cold. 
A practical scheme of literary life had as yet struck no root in his 
mind ; and the assertion of later years, that he was past thirty 
before he was really attached to literature and sensible that he had 
found his vocation in it, is no doubt true. What the conditions of 
his present employment were, he knew well : that if he had dared to 



6(5 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 

indulge any hopes of finer texture, if lie had shown the fragments 
of his poem, if he had produced the acts of the tragedy read to 
Richardson, Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths must have taken immediate 
counsel on the expenses of his board. He was there, as he had 
been in other places of servitude, because the dogs of hunger were 
at his heels. He was not a strong man, as I have said ; but 
neither was his weakness such that he shrank from the responsibi- 
lities it brought. When suffering came, in whatever form, he met 
it with a quiet, manful endurance : no gnashing of the teeth, or 
wringing of the hands. Among the lowest of human beings he 
could take his place, as he afterwards proved his right to sit among 
the highest, by the strength of his affectionate sympathies with the 
nature common to all. And so sustained through the scenes of 
wretchedness he passed, he had done more, though with little 
consciousness of his own, to achieve his destiny, than if, tran- 
scending the worldly plans of wise Irish friends, he had even 
clambered to the bishops' bench, or out-practised the whole college 
of physcians. 

The time is at hand in his history, when all this becomes clear. 
Outside the garret-window of Mr. Griffiths, by the light which the 
miserable labour of the Monthly Beview will let in upon the 
heart-sick labourer, it may soon be seen. Stores of observation, 
of feeling, and experience, hidden from himself at present, are by 
that light to be revealed. It is a thought to carry us through this 
new scene of suffering, with new and unaccustomed hope. 

Goldsmith never publicly avowed what he had written in the 
Monthly Beview ; any more than the Roman poet talked of the 
millstone he turned in his days of hunger. Men who have been 
at the galleys, though for no crime of their own commiting, are 
wiser than to brag of the work they performed there. All he 
stated was, that all he wrote was tampered with by Griffiths or his 
wife. Smollett has depicted this lady, in his letter "to the old 
"gentlewoman who directs the Monthly Beview," as an antiquated 
female critic; and when "illiterate, bookselling" Griffiths de- 
clared unequal war against that potent antagonist, protesting that 
the Monthly Beview was not written by "physicians without 
"practice, authors without learning, men without decency, gentle- 
"men without manners, and critics without judgment," Smollett 
retorted in a few broad unscrupulous lines on the whole party of 
the rival publication. "The Critical Beview is not written," he 
said, "by a parcel of obscure hirelings, under the restraint of a 
" bookseller and his wife, who presume to revise, alter, and amend 
* ' the articles occasionally. The principal writers in the Critical 
" Beview are unconnected with booksellers, unawed by old women, 
"and independent of each other." Commanded by a bookseller, 






chap, i.j REVIEWING FOR MR, AND MRS. GRIFFITHS. 



07 



awed by an old -woman, and miserably dependent, one of these 
obscure hirelings desired and resolved, as far as it was possible, 
to remain in his obscurity ; but a 
copy of the Monthly which belonged 
to Griffiths, and in which he had 
privately marked the authorship of 
most of the articles, withdraws the 
veil. It is for no purpose that Gold- 
smith could have disapproved, or I 
should scorn to assist in calling to 
memory what he would himself have 
committed to neglect. The best 
writers can spare much ; it is only 
the worst who have nothing to spare. 
The first subject I may mention 
first, though it takes us back a little. 
It was the specimen-review which 
had procured Goldsmith his engage- 
ment ; and if the book was furnished 
from the bookseller's stores, it was 
probably the least common-place of all 
they contained. This was the year 

(1757), in which, after six centuries of neglect, the great, dark, 
wonderful field of northern fiction began to be explored. Professor 
Mallet of Copenhagen had translated the Edda. and directed 
attention to the "remains" of Scandinavian poetry and mytho- 
logy ; and Goldsmith's first effort in the Monthly Review was to 
describe the fruits of these researches, to point out resemblances 
to the inspiration of the East, and to note the picturesqueness and 
sublimity of the fierce old Norse imagination. " The learned 
"on this side the Alps," he began, '-'have long laboured at the 
" antiquities of Greece and Rome, but almost totally neglected 
" their own ; like conquerors, who, while they have made inroads 




" natural dominions to desolation." This was a lively interruption 
to the ordinary Monthly dulness, and perhaps the Percys, and 
intelligent subscribers of that sort, opened eyes a little wider at it. 
It was not long after, indeed, that Percy first began to dabble in 
Runic Verses from the Icelandic ; before eight years were passed he 
had published his famous Reliques ; and in five years more, during 
intimacy with the writer of this notice of Mallet, he produced his 
translation of Mallet's Northern Antiquities. In all this there was 
probably no connection ; yet it is wonderful what a word in season 
from a man of genius may do, even when the genius is hireling 
and obscure, and labouring only for the bread it eats. 



08 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 

More common-place was the respectable-looking thin duodecimo 
with which Mr. Griffiths's workman began his next month's labour, 
but a duodecimo which at the time was making noise enough for 
every octavo, quarto, and folio in the shop. This was Douglas, a 
Tragedy, as it is acted at the Theatre Royal in Covent-garden. It 
was not acted at the Theatre Royal in Drury-lane, because Garrick, 
who shortly afterwards so complacently exhibited himself in Agis, 
in the Siege of Aquileia, and other ineffable dulness from the same 
hand (wherein his quick suspicious glance detected no Lady 
Randolphs), would have nothing to do with the character of 
Douglas. What would come with danger from the full strength of 
Mrs. Cibber, he knew might be safely left to the enfeebled powers 
of Mrs. Woffington ; whose Lady Randolph would leave him no one 
to fear but Barry at the rival house. But despairing also of 
Covent-garden when refused by Drury-lane, and crying plague on 
both their houses, to the north had good parson Home returned, 
and, though not till eight months were gone, sent back his play en- 
dorsed by the Scottish capital. There it had been acted ; and from 
the beginning of the world, from the beginning of Edinburgh, the like 
of that play had not been known. The gentlemen who became 
afterwards the Poker Club made their ecstacies felt from Hunter- 
square to Grub-street and St. James's, for no rise in the i:xrice of 
claret had yet imperilled the continuance of those social gatherings. 
Without stint or measure to their warmth the cooling beverage 
flowed ; and bottle after bottle (at eighteenpence a quart) dis- 
appeared in honour of the Scottish Shakespeare, whom the most 
illustrious of the Pokers at once pronounced better than the English, 
because free from " unhappy barbarism;" — yes, because refined 
from the unhappy barbarism of our southern Shakespeare, and 
purged of the licentiousness of our poor London-starved Otway. 
It was veritably David Hume's opinion, and still stands in the 
dedication to the Four Dissertations he was bringing out at the 
time, that "Johnny Home" had all the theatric genius of those 
two poets so refined and purged. But little was even a philo- 
sopher's exaltation, to the persecution of a presbytery. No man 
better than Hume knew that. The first volume of his History 
had lain hopelessly on Millar's shelves, after sale of forty-five 
copies in a twelvemonth, when, on inquisitorial proceedings of 
the General Assembly against Lord Karnes and himself, the 
public in turn became inquisitive and began to buy. And, surely 
as the History of Hume must even puffery of Home have lan- 
guished, but for that resolve of the presbytery to eject from his 
pulpit a parson who had written a play. It carried Douglas to 
London ; secured a nine nights' reasonable wonder ; and the noise 
of the carriages on their way to Covent-garden to see the Norval 



chap, i.] REVIEWING FOR MR. AND MRS. GRIFFITHS. 69 

of silver-tongued Barry, were now giving sudden headaches to 
David Garrick, and strange comparisons of silver tongues to the 
hooting of owls. 

But out of reach of every influence to raise or to depress, unless 
it be a passing thought now and then to his own tragic fragments, 
sits the critic with the thin duodecimo before him. The popular 
stir affects even quiet Gray in his cloistered nook of Pembroke 
Hall ; but the sharp, clear, graceful judgment now lodged and 
boarded at The Dunciad, shows itself quite un-affected. ' ' When 
"the town," it began, "by a tedious succession of indifferent per- 
' i formances, has been long confined to censure, it will naturally 
" wish for an opportunity of praise." That is, as I understand it, 
the town, sick of Doctor Brown's Athelstan and Barbarossa, of Mr. 
Whitehead's Creusa, of Mr. Crisp's Virginia, of Mr. Glover's 
Boadicea, of Doctor Francis's Eugenia, of Mr. Aaron Hill's 
Merope, of the Begulus of Mr. Havard, and the Mahomet of Mr. 
Miller, on which lean fare it has had perforce to diet itself for 
several seasons, turns to anything of the reasonable promise of a 
Douglas, with disposition to enjoy it if it can. But the more 
marked, Goldsmith felt, was the critical folly that could obtrude 
such a work as " perfect," in proof of which he made brief but keen 
mention of its leading defects ; while to those who would plead in 
arrest particular beauties of diction, he directed a remark which 
seems to belong to a subtler style of criticism than his own. "In 
" works of this nature, general observation often characterises more 
1 ' strongly than a particular criticism could do ; for it were an easy 
" task to point out those passages in any indifferent author where 
' l he has excelled himself, and yet these comparative beauties, if we 
c ' may be allowed the expression, may have no real merit at all. 
" Poems, like buildings, have their point of view ; and too near a 
"situation gives but a partial conception of the whole." Southey, 
not knowing the writer, said that all this was malignant, but 
really no such spirit is apparent in it. Yery good-naturedly does 
Goldsmith close with quotation of two of the best passages in the 
poem, emphatically marking with excellent taste five lines of 
allusion to the wars of Scotland and England. 

Gallant in strife, and noble in their ire, 
The Battle is their pastime, They go forth 
Gay in the morning, as to Summer sport : 
When evening comes, the glory of the morn, 
The youthful warrior, is a clod of clay. 

If Boswell, on Johnson's challenge to show any good lines out of 
Douglas, had mustered sense and discrimination to offer these, the 
Doctor could hardly have exploded his emphatic pooh I Goldsmith 



70 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [boos ii. 

differed little from Johnson in the matter, it is true : but his pooh 
was more polite. 

A Scottish Homer in due time followed the Shakespeare : Mr. 
Griffiths submitting to his boarder, in a very thick duodecimo, The 
Epigoniad, A Poem in Nine Books. Doctor Wilkie's laboured 
versification of his adventures of the descendants of the Theban 
warriors, got into Anderson's collection, the editor being a Scotch- 
man : though candid enough to say of it, that ' ' too antique to 
" please the unlettered reader, and too modern for the scholar, it was 
"neglected by both, read by few, and soon forgotten by all." 
Yet this not very profound editor might have been more candid, 
and told us that his sentence was stolen and adapted from the 
Monthly Review. After discussion of the claims justly due and 
always conceded to a writer of genuine learning, Goldsmith re- 
marked : " On the contrary, if he be detected of ignorance when 
" he pretends to learning, his case will deserve our pity : too 
"antique to please one party, and too modern for the other, he is 
" deserted by both, read by few, and soon forgotten by all, except 
"his enemies." Perhaps, if his friends had forgotten him, Wilkie 
might have profited. "The Epigoniad" continued Goldsmith, 
" seems to be one of those new old performances ; a work that 
" would no more have pleased a peripatetic of the academic grove, 
' ' than it will captivate the unlettered subscriber to one of our 
" circulating libraries." Nevertheless the Scottish clique made a 
stand for their rough Homeric doctor. Smith, Robertson, and 
Hume were vehement in laudation ; Charles Townshend ("who," 
writes Hume to Adam Smith, ' ' passes for the cleverest fellow in 
' ' England ") said aye to all their praises ; and when, some months 
afterwards, Hume came up to London to bring out the Tudor 
volumes of his History, he published puffs of Wilkie, under 
assumed signatures, both in the Critical JRevieiv and in various 
magazines, and reported progress to the Edinburgh circle. It was 
somewhat "uphill work," he told Adam Smith ; and with much 
mortification hinted to Robertson that the verdict of the Monthly 
Revieiv (vulgarly interpolated, I should mention, by Griffiths 
himself) would have upon the whole to stand. "However," he 
adds, in his letter to Robertson, " if you want a little flattery to 
' ' the author (which I own is very refreshing to an author), you may 
' ' tell him that Lord Chesterfield said to me he was a great poet. 
" I imagine that Wilkie will be very much elevated by praise from 
"an English earl, and a knight of the garter, and an ambassador, 
1 ' and a secretary of state, and a man of so great reputation. For I 
" observe that the greatest rustics are commonly most affected with 
" such circumstances." It is to be hoped he was, and proportionally 
forgetful of low abuse from obscure hirelings in booksellers' garrets. 



chap, i.] REVIEWING- FOE MR. AND MRS. GRIFFITHS. 71 

"An Irish gentleman," Hume in another letter told Adam 
Smith, "wrote lately a very pretty treatise on the Sublime." 
This Irish gentleman had indeed written so pretty a treatise on the 
Sublime, that the task-work of our critic became work of praise. 
" When I was beginning the world," said Johnson in his old age to 
Fanny Burney, "and was nothing and nobody, the joy of my life 
"was to fire at all the established wits." Perhaps it is a natural 
infirmity when one is nothing and nobody, and when Goldsmith 
became something and somebody his friends still charged it upon 
him. They may have had some reason, for he was never subtle, 
and seldom even reliable, in literary judgments ; but as yet, at any 
rate, the particular weakness does not appear. A critic of the pro- 
founder sort he never was ; indeed criticism of that order was little 
known, and seldom practised in his day ; and he seems to have had 
even less than falls to the lot of most men of letters, of the clear 
insight and keen relish so essential to it. But as it is less the want 
of depth, than the presence of envy, which it has been the fashion 
to urge against him, it will become us in fairness to observe that 
from the latter vice, at least, he is here, in the garret of Griffiths, 
tolerably free : whether it is to seize him in the drawing-room of 
Reynolds, will be matter of later inquiry. He has no pretension 
yet to enter himself brother or craftsman of the guild of literature, 
and we find him in his censures just and temperate, and liberal as 
well as candid in his praise : glad to give added fame to established 
wits, as even the youths Bonnell Thornton and George Colman 
were beginning already to be esteemed ; and eager, in such a case 
as Burke's, to help that the wit should be established. In the 
same number of the Review he noticed the collection into four 
small volumes of the Connoisseur, and the appearance in its three- 
shilling pamphlet of A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our 
Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. The Connoisseur he honoured 
with the title of friend of society, wherein reference was possibly 
intended to the defective side of that lectureship of society, 
to which the serious and resolute author of the Rambler had been 
lately self-appointed perpetual professor. "He rather converses," 
said Goldsmith, "with the ease of a cheerful companion, than 
"dictates, as other writers in this class have done, with the 
" affected superiority of an Author. He is the first writer since 
" Bicker staff who has been perfectly satirical yet perfectly good- 
"natured ; and who never, for the sake of declamation, represents 
" simple folly as absolutely criminal. He has solidity to please the 
"grave, and humour and wit to allure the gay." Our author by 
compulsion seemed here to anticipate his authorship by choice, and 
with indistinct yet hopeful glance beyond his Dunciad and its 
deities, perhaps turned with better faith to Burke's essay on the 



n OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book it. 

Beautiful. His criticism was elaborate and well-studied ; he 
objected to many parts of the theory, and especially to the 
materialism on which it founded the connection of objects of 
pleasure with a necessary relaxation of the nerves ; but these 
objections, discreet and well-considered, gave strength and relish to 
its praise, and Burke spoke to many of his friends of the pleasure 
it had given him. 

And now appeared, in three large quarto volumes, followed 
within six months by a fourth, the Complete History of England, 
deduced from the Descent of Julius Ccesar to the Treaty of Aix la 
Cliapelle in 1748. Containing the Transactions of One Thousand 
Eight Hundred and Three Years. By T. Smollett, M.D. The 
wonder of this performance had been its incredibly rapid produc- 
tion : the author of Random and Pickle having in the space of 
fourteen months scoured through those eighteen centuries. It was 
a scheme of the London booksellers to thwart the success of Hume, 
which promised just then to be too considerable for an undertaking 
in which the craft .had no concern. His Commonwealth volume, 
profiting by religious outcry against its author, was selling 
vigorously; people were inquiring for the preceding Stuart volume; 
and Paternoster-row, alarmed for its rights and properties in 
standard history books, resolved to take the field before the 
promised Tudor volumes could be brought to market. They 
backed their best man and succeeded. The Complete History, we 
are told, "had a very disagreeable effect on Mr. Hume's per- 
4 ' forniance. " It had also, it would appear, a very disagreeable 
effect on Mr. Hume's temper. " These things are very tempo- 
"rary," he writes to Millar. "A Frenchman came to me," he 
writes to Robertson, ' ' and spoke of translating my new volume of 
' i history : but as he also mentioned his intention of translating 
"Smollett, I gave him no encouragement to proceed." It had 
besides, it may be added, a very disagreeable effect on the tempers 
of other people. Warburton heard of its swift sale while his own 
Divine Legation lay heavy and quiet at his publisher's ; and " the 
"vagabond Scot who writes nonsense," was the character vouch- 
safed to Smollett by the vehement, proud priest. But Goldsmith 
keeps his temper, notwithstanding Smollett's great and somewhat 
easily earned good fortune : and in this, as in former instances, 
there is no disposition to carp at a great success, or quarrel with a 
celebrated name. His notice has evident marks of the interpolation 
of Griffiths, though that worthy's more deadly hostility to Smollett 
had not yet begun ; but even as it stands, in the Review which 
had so many points of personal and political opposition to the 
subject of it, it is manly and kind. The weak places were pointed 
out with gentleness, while Goldsmith strongly seized on what he 



ohap. i.] REVIEWING FOR MR. AND MRS. GRIFFITHS. 73 

felt to be the strength of Smollett. " The style of this Historian," 
he said, " is in general clear, nervous, and flowing ; and we think 
"it impossible for a reader of taste not to be pleased with the 
"perspicuity and elegance of his manner." 

For the critic's handling in lighter matters, I will mention what 
he said of a book by Jonas Hanway. This was the Jonas of whom 
Doctor Johnson affirmed that he acquired some reputation by 
travelling abroad, but lost it all by travelling at home : not a 
witticism, but a sober truth. His book about Persia was excellent, 
and his book about Portsmouth indifferent. But though an 
i eccentric, he was a very benevolent and earnest man ; and though 
he made the common mistake of thinking himself even more wise 
than he was good, he had too much reason to complain, which he 
was always doing, of a general want of earnestness and seriousness 
in his age. His larger schemes of benevolence have connected his 
name with the Marine Society and the Magdalen, both of which he 
originated, as well as with the Foundling, which he was active in 
improving ; and to his courage and perseverance in smaller fields 
of usefulness (his determined contention with extravagant vails to 
servants not the least), the men of Goldsmith's day were indebted 
for liberty to use an umbrella. Gay's pleasant Trivia, and Swift's 
masterly description of a City Shower, commemorate its earlier 
: use by poor women ; by "tuck'd-up sempstresses" and " walking- 
1 ' maids ; " but with even this class it was a winter privilege, and 
woe to the woman of a better sort, or to the man whether rich or 
poor, who dared at any time so to invade the rights of coach- 
men and chairmen. But Jonas steadily underwent the staring, 
laughing, jeering, hooting, and bullying ; and having punished 
, some insolent knaves who struck him with their whips as well as 
tongues, he finally established a privilege which, when the 
; Journal des Debats gravely assured its readers that the king of the 
: barricades (that king whose throne has since been burnt at the 
I top of fresh barricades on the site of the Bastille) was to be seen 
i walking the streets of Paris with an umbrella under his arm, had 
reached its culminating point and played a part in state affairs. 
j Excellent Mr. Hanway, having settled the use of the umbrella, 
I made a less successful move when he would have written down the 
use of tea. 

This is one of the prominent subjects in the Journey from 
Portsmouth : the book which Griffiths had now placed in his 
( workman's hands. Doctor Johnson's review of it for the Literary 
I Magazine is widely known, and Goldsmith's deserved notoriety as 
well. It is more kindly, and as effectively, written. He saw 
what allowance could be made for a writer, however mistaken, who 
" shows great goodness of heart, and an earnest concern for the 



74 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book n. 

' ' welfare of his country. " Where the book was at its worst, the 
man might be at his best, he very agreeably undertakes to prove, 
"The appearance of an inn on the road suggests to our Philoso- 
"pher an eulogium on temperance; the confusion of a disap- 
" pointed landlady gives rise to a Letter on Resentment ; and the 
' ' view of a company of soldiers furnishes out materials for an 
"Essay on War." As to the anti-souchong mania, Goldsmith 
laughs at it; and this was doubtless the wisest way. "He," 
exclaimed Jonas in horror, "who should be able to drive three 
' ' Frenchmen before him, or she who might be a breeder of such a 
"race of men, are to be seen sipping their Tea ! . . . What a wild 
" infatuation is this ! . . . The suppression of this dangerous 
"custom depends entirely on the example of ladies of rank in this 
"country . . . Some indeed have resolution enough in their own 
' ' houses, to confine the use of Tea to their own table, but their 
"number is so extremely small, amidst a numerous acquaintance 
" I know only of Mrs. T. . . . whose name ought to be written out 
"in letters of gold." "Thus we see," is Goldsmith's comment 
upon this, " how fortunate some folks are. Mrs. T. . . . is praised 
"for confining luxury to her own table : she earns fame, and saves 
"something in domestic expenses!" In subsequent serious 
expostulation with Mr. Hanway on some medical assumptions in 
his book, the reviewer lays aside his humble patched velvet of 
Bankside, and speaks as though with nothing less invested than 
the president's gold-headed cane: after which he closes with this 
piece of quiet- good-sense. "Yet after all, why so violent an 
" outcry against this devoted article of modern luxury ? Every 
"nation that is rich hath had, and will have, its favourite 
"luxuries. Abridge the people in one, they generally run into 
' ' another ; and the reader may judge which will be most con- 
" ducive to either mental or bodily health, the watery beverage of 
" a modern fine lady, or the strong beer, and stronger waters, of 
" her great-grandmother 1" 

This paper had appeared in July, and in the same number 
there was also a clever notice from the same hand of Dobson's 
translation of the first book of Cardinal de Polignac's Latin poem 
of Anti-Lucretius : the poem whose ill success stopped Gray in j 
what he playfully called his Master Tommy Lucretius (" De Prin- 
" cipiis Cogitandi"). The cardinal's work I may mention as a huge 
monument of misapplied learning and not a little vanity ; the talk 
of the world in those days, now forgotten. It was the work of a I 
life ; could boast of having been corrected by Boileau and altered > 
by Louis the Fourteenth ; and was kept in manuscript so long, 
and so often, with inordinate self-complacency, publicly recited 
from by the author in a kind earnest of what the world was one 






chap. I.] REVIEWING FOR MR. AND MRS. GRIFFITHS. 



75 



day to expect, that some listeners with good memories (Le Clerc 
among them) stole its best passages, and published them for the 
world's earlier benefit as their own. This drove the poor cardinal 
at last to premature delivery, and an instalment of thirteen thou- 
sand lines appeared ; of which certainly one line, Eripuitque Jovi 
fulmen, Phceboque sagi tas (which the worthy cardinal had himself 
stolen from Marcus Manilius), having since suggested Franklin's 
epitaph, Eripuit coelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis, has a good 
chance to live. To the August number of the Bevieiv, among 
other matters, Goldsmith contributed a lively paper on those new 
volumes of Voltaire's Universal History which so delighted 
Walpole and Gray; but in the September number, where he 
remarks on Odes by Mr. Gray, I find opinions which place in 
lively contrast the obscure Oliver and the brilliant Horace. 

Walpole called himself a "Whig, in ' compliment to his father ; 
but except in very rare humours he hated, while he envied, all 
things popular. "I am 
" more humbled," was his 
cry, when thirsting for 
every kind of notoriety, 
"I am more humbled by 
" any applause in the pre- 
" sent age, than by hosts 
"of such critics as Dean 
"Milles." He was very 
steady in his fondness for 
Gray (though Gray ap- 
pears never to have quite 
thrown aside the recollec- 
tion of their early dis- 
agreement), because there 
was that real indifference 
to popular influences in 
the poet, which the wit 
I and fine gentleman was anxious to have credit for. This liking 
j he proclaimed on all occasions ; had written the short advertise- 
I ment which prefaced the first edition of the Elegy ; had himself 
taken the risk of publishing, four years before, "a fine edition of 
, "six poems of Mr. Gray, with prints from designs of Mr. It. 
"Bentley;" and when he heard, in the July of this year, that 
( Gray had left his Cambridge retreat for a visit to Dodsley the 
! bookseller, he managed, as he says himself, to " snatch" away the 
[ new Odes to confer grace on the newly started types at Strawberry- 
1 hill. These were the Bard and the Progress of Poesy ; two noble 
productions, it must surely be admitted, whatever of cavil can be 

e 2 





76 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 

urged against them for the want of clearness or of ease ; though 
not to be admired after the manner of Walpole, who never praises 
without showing his dislike of others, much more than his love of 
Gray. "You are very particular, I can tell you," he says to 
Montague, * ' in liking Gray's Odes : but you must remember that 
' ' the age likes Akenside, and did like Thomson ! can the same 
' ' people like both ? Milton was forced to wait till the world had 
" done admiring Quarles." It was a habit of depreciation too much 
the manner of the time. Even the enchanting genius of Collins 
struck no responsive chord in Gray himself ; nor had the Elegies of 
Shenstone, the Imagination of Akenside, or even the Castle of 
Indolence itself, found always grateful welcome from the learned 
idleness of the poet of Pembroke Hall. 

But Goldsmith, for the present, was not to this manner born ; 
and though he might perhaps more freely have acknowledged the 
splendour of Gray's imagination and the deep humanity of his 
feeling, his exquisite pathos, the melancholy grandeur of his tone, 
his touching thoughts and most delicately chosen words, — yet he 
was at least not disposed, when Mr. Griffiths laid Messrs. Dodsley's 
shilling quarto before him, to any comparison or test less fair than 
his own feeling of the objects and aims of poetry. And this he 
stated with a strength and plainness which marks with personal 
interest what was said of Gray. Portions of a poem he had him- 
self already written, fragments of exquisite simplicity ; and in 
what the tone of this criticism exhibits, we see what will one day 
give unity and aim to those poetical attempts, and raise them into 
enduring structures. We observe the gradual development of 
settled views ; the better defined thoughts which the rude begin- 
nings of literature are breeding in him ; the rich upturning of the 
soil of his mind, as Mr. Griffiths passes with his harrow. The toils 
and sufferings of the past are now not only yielding fruit to him, 
but teaching him how it may be gathered. 

The lesson is very simple, but of inappreciable value, and the 
reverse of Horace Walpole' s. It is to study the people, whom 
Walpole would disregard ; to address those popular sympathies, 
which he affected to despise ; to speak the language of the heart, 
of which he knew not much ; and before all things study, what so 
little came within the range of his experience, the joys and the 
sorrows of the poor. It is the lesson which Roger Ascham would 
have taught two hundred and fifty years before — to think as a 
wise man, but to speak as the common people. 

We cannot without some regret behold talents so capable of giving pleasure 
to all, exerted in efforts that at best can amuse only the few ; we cannot 
behold this rising Poet seeking fame among the learned, without hinting to 
him the same advice that Isocrates used to give his Scholars, Study the 



chap. I.] REVIEWING- FOR MR. AND MRS. GRIFFITHS. 77 

People. This study it is that has conducted the great Masters of antiquity 
up to immortality. Pindar himself, of whom our modern Lyrist is an 
imitator, appears entirely guided by it. He adapted his works exactly to 
the dispositions of his countrymen. Irregular, enthusiastic, and quick in 
transition, — he wrote for a people inconstant, of warm imaginations, and 
exquisite sensibility. He chose the most popular subjects, and all his allu- 
sions are to customs well-known, in his days, to the meanest person. 

Admirable rebuke to those who seize the form, but not the 
spirit, of an elder time, and mistake the phrase which passes in a 
century", for the heart which is young for ever. The poetical 
genius of which Goldsmith is already conscious, was in its essential 
character of a lower grade than that of Gray : but the exquisite 
uses to which he will direct it, and the wise and earnest purpose 
which will shape and control it, are to be read, as it seems to me, 
in this excellent piece of criticism. 

Mr. Gray, continued Goldsmith, wants the Greek writer's 



He speaks to a people not easily impressed with new ideas ; extremely 
tenacious of the old ; with difficulty warmed ; and as slowly cooling again. 
How unsuited, tben, to our national character is that species of poetry which 
rises upon us with unexpected flights ; where we must hastily catch the 
thought, or it flies from us, and the reader must largely partake of the poet's 
enthusiasm, in order to taste his beauties ! . . . Mr. Gray's Odes, it must be 
confessed, breathe much of the spirit of Pindar ; but then they have caught 
the seeming obscurity, the sudden transition, and hazardous epithet of his 
mighty master ; all which, though evidently intended for beauties, will pro- 
bably be regarded as blemishes by the generality of his readers. In short, 
they are in some measure a representation of what Pindar now appears to 
be, though perhaps not what he appeared to the States of Greece, when they 
rivalled each other in his applause, and when Pan himself was seen dancing 
to his melody. 

Nothing could be happier than this last allusion. 

Of the capabilities of Gray's genius, misdirected as he thus believed 
it to be, it is satisfactory to mark Goldsmith's strong appreciation. 
He speaks of him, in the emphatic line of the Churchyard Elegy ', as 
one whom the muse had marked for her own. He grieves that 
"such a genius" should not do justice to itself, by trusting more 
implicitly to its own powers ; and quotes passages from the Bard 
to support his belief that they are as great "as anj^hing of that 
' ' species of composition which has hitherto appeared in our 
\ 1 language, the Odes of Dryden himself not excepted. " Certainly to 
the two exceptions therefore, which, while Goldsmith wrote, Gray 
was describing to Hurd ("my friends tell me that the Odes do not 
" succeed, and write me moving topics of consolation on that 
" head : I have heard of nobody but an actor and a doctor of 
" divinity that profess their esteem for them"), might with some 
reason have been added the poor monthly critic of The Dunciad. 



78 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 

I wish. I could say, that, in later and more successful days, he 
resisted with equal good taste and good sense the influence of 
Johnson's habitual and strange dislike to one of the most amiable 
men and delightful writers to be met with in our English 
literature. 



CHAPTEK II. 



MAKING SHIFT TO EXIST. 1757—1758. 

With the number of the Monthly Review which completed 
the fifth month of Goldsmith's engagement with Mr. and 
J; I' Mrs. Griffiths, his labours suddenly closed. The circum- 
stances were never clearly explained ; but that a serious 
quarrel had arisen with his employer, there is no reason to doubt. 
Griffiths accused him of idleness ; said he affected an independence 
which did not become his condition, and left his desk before the 
day was done ; — nor would the reproach appear to be groundless, 
if the amount of his labour for Griffiths were to be measured by 
those portions only which have been traced ; but this would be 
simply absurd, for the mass of it undoubtedly has perished. For 
himself Goldsmith retorted, that from the bookseller he had suf- 
fered impertinence, and from his wife privation ; that Mr. Griffiths 
withheld common respect, and Mrs. Griffiths the most ordinary 
comforts ; that they both tampered with his articles, and, as it 
suited their ignorance or convenience, wholly altered them ; and 
finally, that no part of the contract had been broken by himself, 
he having always worked incessantly every day from nine o'clock 
till two, and on special days of the week from an earlier hour until 
late at night. Proof of the most curious part of this counter- 
statement, as to interpolation of the articles, was in the possession 
of his first biographers ; and as it now appears, from a published 
letter of Doctor Campbell to Bishop Percy, was at the last moment, 
in fear of abuse from reviewers, suppressed. 

But notwithstanding the quarrel, and Goldsmith's departure 
from the house, Griffiths retained his hold. Later events will show 
this ; and that probably some small advance was his method of 
effecting it. It enabled him to keep up the appearance of civility 
when Goldsmith left his door ; and to keep back the purpose of 
injury and insult till it could fall with heavier effect. The oppor- 
tunity was not lost when it came, nor did the bookseller's malice 
end with the writer's death. " Superintend the Monthly Bevieiv !" 
cried Griffiths, noticing, in the number for August 1774, a brief 



chap, ii.] MAKING SHIFT TO EXIST. 79 

memoir of Goldsmith, professing to have been written from personal 
knowledge, in which his connection with the work was so described. 
' ' We are authorised to say that the author is very much mistaken 
" in his assertion. The Doctor had his merit as a man of letters ; 
' ' but alas ! those who knew him must smile at the idea of such a 
"superintendent of a concern which most obviously required some 
"degree of prudence, as well as a competent acquaintance with 
" the world. It is, however, true that he had, for a while, a 
' i seat at our board ; and that, so far as his knowledge of books 
"extended, he was not an unuseful assistant." 

And so, without this belauded prudence, without this treasure of a 
competent acquaintance with the world, — into that wide, friendless, 
desolate world, the poor writer, the not unuseful assistant, was 
launched again. How or where he lived for the next few months, 
is matter of great uncertainty. But his letters were addressed to 
George's, the Temple-exchange Coffee-house near Temple-bar, where 
the waiter lie celebrates in the third number of his Bee took charge 
of them ; the garret where he wrote and slept is supposed to have 
been in one of the courts near the neighbouring Salisbury- square ; 
Doctor Kippis, one of the Monthly Reviewers, "was impressed by 
' ' some faint recollection of his having made translations from the 
' ' French, among others of a tale from Voltaire ; " and the recollec- 
tion is made stronger by one of his autographs formerly in Heber's 
collection, which purports to be a receipt from Mr. Ralph Griffiths 
for ten guineas, probably signed a day or two before he left the 
Monthly, for translation of a book entitled Memoirs of my Lady B. 
Another writer in the Review, Doctor James Grainger, to whom 
his residence at the sign of The Dunciad had made him known, and 
of whom the translation of Tibullus, the Ode to Solitude, the ballad 
of Bryan and Pereene, and the poem of the Sugar Cane, have kept 
a memory very pleasant though very limited, made the same 
coffee-house his place of call, and often saw Goldsmith there. The 
month in which he separated from Griffiths was that in which 
Newbery's Literary Magazine lost Johnson's services ; but this 
seems the only ground for a surmise that those services were 
replaced by Goldsmith's. The magazine itself shows little mark 
of his hand, until his admitted connection with it some months 
later. 

Toiling thus through an obscurity dark as the life itself, the 
inquirer finds on a sudden a glimpse of light, which for an instant 
places him in that garret near Salisbury-square. Its inmate sits 
alone in wretched drudgery, when the door opens, and a raw-looking 
country youth of twenty stands doubtfully on the doleful thresh- 
hold. Goldsmith sees at once his youngest brother Charles ; but 
Charles cannot bring himself to see, in the occupier of this misera- 



so 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 



ble dwelling, the brother on whose supposed success he had already 
built his own ! Without education, profession, friends, or resource 
of any kind, it had suddenly occurred to this enterprising Irish 




lad, as he lounged in weary idleness round Ballymahon, that as 
brother Oliver had not been asking for assistance lately, but was 
now a settled author in London, perhaps he had gotten great men 
for his friends, and a kind word to one of them might be the 
making of his fortune. Full of this he scrambled to London as he 
could, won the secret of the house from the Temple-exchange waiter 
to whom he confided his relationship, and found the looked-for 
architect of wealth and honour here ! " All in good time, my dear 
"boy," cried Oliver joyfully, to check the bitterness of despair; 
"all in good time : I shall be richer by and by. Besides, you see, 
" I am not in positive want. Addison, let me tell you, wrote his 
" poem of the Campaign in a garret in the Hayrnarket, three stories 
" high ; and you see I am not come to that yet, for I have only got 
"to the second story." He made Charles sit and answer questions 
about his Irish friends ; but at this point the light is again with- 
drawn, and for some two months there is greater darkness than 
before 

Charles (who certainly had no lack of the adventurous spirit, 
and so far resembled Oliver, that at the close of a long life of great 
vicissitude he said he had met with no such friend in adversity as 
his flute) quitted London in a few daj^s, suddenly and secretly as 



chap, ii.] MAKING SHIFT TO EXIST. 81 

he had entered it, and shortly sailed, in a humble capacity it is 
said, for Jamaica : whence he did not return till after four-and- 
thirty years, to tell this anecdote, and to be described by Malone 
as not a little like his celebrated brother, even in person, speech, 
and manner. The next clear view of Oliver is from a letter to 
his brother-in-law Hodson, with the date of " Temple- exchange 
" Coffee-house (where you may direct an answer), Dec. 27, 1757 ;" 
fortunately kept. The miserable year had brought no happier 
Christmas to Goldsmith ; but he writes with a manly cheerfulness, 
which offers no selfish affront to the unselfish spirit of the season. 
Some unsuccessful efforts of this Hodson to raise a subscription in 
answer to the supplication for Irish aid during the travel abroad, 
would seem to have been mentioned by Charles ; and gratitude, 
for a little made Goldsmith grateful, prompted the letter. He 
begins by reminding his kinsman that his last letters to Ireland, 
and to him in particular, of the date of four years ago, were left 
unanswered. 

My brother Charles, however, informs me of the fatigue you were at in 
soliciting a subscription to assist me, not only among my friends and rela- 
tions, but acquaintances in general. Though my pride might feel some re- 
pugnance at being thus relieved, yet my gratitude can suffer no diminution. 
How much am I obliged to you, to them, for such generosity, or (why should 
not your virtues have their proper name ?) for such charity to me at that 
juncture. . . My not receiving that supply was the cause of my present esta- 
blishment at London. You may easily imagine what difficulties I had to 
encounter, left as I was without friends, recommendations, money, or impu- 
dence ; and that in a country where being born an Irishman was sufficient to 
keep me unemployed. Many in such circumstances would have had recourse 
to the friar's cord, or the suicide's halter. But, with all my follies, I had 
principle to resist the one, and resolution to combat the other. I suppose 
you desire to know my present situation. As there is nothing in it at which I 
should blush, or which mankind could censure, I see no reason for making it 
a secret ; in short, by a very little practice as a physician, and a very little 
reputation as a poet, I make a shift to live. Nothing is more apt to introduce 
us to the gates of ths Muses than poverty ; but it were well if they only left 
us at the door. The mischief is, they sometimes choose to give us their com- 
pany at the entertainment ; and Want, instead of being gentleman usher, 
often turns master of the ceremonies. Thus, upon hearing I write, no doubt 
you imagine I starve, and the name of an author naturally reminds you of a 
garret. In this particular I do not think proper to undeceive my friends. 
But whether I eat or starve, live in a first floor or four pair of stairs high, I 
still remember them with ardour, nay my very country comes in for a share of 
my affection. 

This glance at the gloomy aspect of his present fortunes would 
be less pathetic to me if it had been less playful. His Irish friends 
had shown the charitable wish, however unavailing ; and he would 
not trouble friendly eyes with needless exhibition of his sufferings, 
or make grim Want the master of other than somewhat cheerful 
ceremonies. Lightly and quickly, therefore, he passes from, the 

E 3 



32 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 

subject, to that unaccountable fondness for Ireland already men- 
tioned in connection with this letter. What little pleasures he had 
ever tasted in London, he says, Irish memories had soured. Signora 
Columba had never poured out for him all the mazes of melody at 
the opera, that he did not sit and sigh for Lissoy fireside, and 
Peggy Golden's song of Johnny Armstrong's Last Good Night. 

If I climb Hampstead Hill, than where Nature never exhibited a more 
magnificent prospect, I confess it fine ; but then I had rather be placed on the 
little mount before Lishoy gate, and there take in, to me, the most pleasing 
horizon in nature. Before Charles came hither, my thoughts sometimes found 
refuge from severer studies among my friends in Ireland. I fancied strange 
revolutions at home ; but I find it was the rapidity of my own motion, that 
gave an imaginary one to objects really at rest. No alterations there. Some 
friends, he tells me, are still lean, but very rich ; others very fat, but still 
very poor. Nay, all the news I hear from [of] you is that you sally out in 
visits among the neighbours, and sometimes make a migration from the blue 
bed to the brown. I could from my heart wish that you and she, and Lishoy, 
and Ballymahon, and all of you, would fairly make a migration into Middlesex : 
though, upon second thoughts, this might be attended with a few inconveni- 
ences ; therefore, as the mountain will not come to Mahomet, why, Mahomet 
shall go to the mountain. 

Poet and Physician, — the ragged livery of Grub-street under 
one high-sounding name, and wretched fee-less patients beneath 
the other ! He was the poet of Hogarth's print, which the com- 
mon people then hailed with laughter at every print-shop ; he was 
again, it would seem, the poor physician of the patched velvet 
among hovels of Bankside ; and yet it was but pleasant colouring 
for the comfort of brother-in-law Hodson, when he said that with 
both he made a shift to live. With even more, he failed to attain 
that object of humble ambition. 
™' o' In February, 1758, two duodecimos appeared with this 
'most explanatory title : 

The Memoirs of a Protestant, condemned to the Galleys of France for 
his Religion. Written by himself. Comprehending an account of the various 
distresses he suffered in slavery, and his constancy in supporting almost 
every cruelty that bigoted zeal could inflict, or human nature sustain. Also 
•a description of the Galleys, and the service in which they are employed. 
The whole interspersed with anecdotes relative to the general history of the 
times for a period of thirteen years, during which the author continued in 
slavery till he was at last set free at the intercession of the Court of Great 
Britain. Translated from the Original, just published at the Hague, by James 
Willington. 

James Willington was in reality Oliver Goldsmith. The property 
of the book belonged to Griffiths, who valued one name quite as 
much as the other ; and the position of the translator appears in 
the subsequent assignment of the manuscript, at no small profit to 
Griffiths, by the Paternoster-row bookseller to bookseller Dilly of 



chap, ii.] MAKING SHIFT TO EXIST. "83 

the Poultry, for the sum of twenty guineas. But though the trans- 
lator's name might pass for Willington, the writer could only write 
as Goldsmith ; and though with bitterness he calls himself " the 
" obscure prefacer," the preface is clear, graceful, and characteristic, 
as in brighter days. The book cannot be recommended, he says, 
as a grateful entertainment to the readers of reigning romance, for 
it is strictly true. "No events are here to astonish; no unex- 
"pected incidents to surprise ; no such high-finished pictures, as 
" captivate the imagination and have made fiction fashionable. 
" Our reader must be content with the simple exhibition of truth, 
"and consequently of nature; he must be satisfied to see vice 
"triumphant and virtue in distress; to see men punished or 
" rewarded, not as his wishes, but as Providence has thought proper 
"to direct ; for all here wears the face of sincerity." Then, with 
a spirit that shows how strongly he entered into the popular feeling 
of the day, he contrasts popery and absolute power with the rational 
religion and moderate constitutionalism of England ; glances at 
the scenes of dungeon, rack, and scaffold through which the narra- 
tive will pass ; and calls them but a part of the accumulated 
wretchedness of a miscalled glorious time, ' ' while Louis, surnamed 
"the Great, was feasting at Versailles, fed with the incense of 
"flattery, or sunk in the lewd embraces of a prostitute." 

But why stood " James Willington " on the title page of this 
book, instead of " Oliver Goldsmith," since the names were both 
unknown % The question will not admit of a doubtful answer, 
though a braver I could wish to have given. At this point there 
is evidence of despair. 

Not without well-earned knowledge had Goldsmith passed 
through the task- work of the Monthly Bevieiv : faculties which 
lay unused within him, were by this time not unknown ; and a 
stronger man, with a higher constancy and fortitude, might with 
that knowledge have pushed resolutely on, and, conquering the fate 
of those who look back when their objects are forward, found 
earlier sight of the singing tree and the golden water. But to him 
it seemed hopeless to climb any further up the desperate steep ; 
over the dark obstructions which the world is glad to interpose 
between itself and the best labourers in its service, he had not as 
yet risen high enough to see the gbmmering of light beyond : 
even lower, therefore, than the school-room at Doctor Milner's, 
from which he had been taken to his literary toil, he thought him- 
self now descended ; and in a sudden sense of misery more intole- 
rable, might have cried with Edgar, 

gods ! who is't can say " I am at the worst ?" 
/ am worse than e'er I was. 



84 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 

He returned to Doctor Milner's ; — if ever, from thence, again to 
return to literature, to embrace it for choice and with a braver 
heart endure its worst necessities. 

There came that time ; and when, eighteen months after the 
present date, he was writing the Bee, he thus turned into pleasant 
fiction the incidents now described. 

I was once induced to show my indignation against the public, by discon- 
tinuing my endeavours to please ; and was bravely resolved, like Raleigh, to 
vex them by burning my manuscripts in a passion. Upon recollection, how- 
ever, I considered what set or body of people would be displeased at my rash- 
ness. The sun, after so sad an accident, might shine next morning as bright 
as usual ; men might laugh and sing the next day, and transact business as 
before, and not a single creature feel any regret but myself. . . . Instead of 
having Apollo in mourning, or the Muses in a fit of the spleen ; instead of 
having the learned world apostrophising at my untimely decease ; perhaps all 
Grub-street might laugh at my fall, and self-approving dignity might never be 
able to shield me from ridicule. 

Worse than ridicule had he spared himself, with timely aid of these 
better thoughts ; but they came too late. He made his melancholy 
journey to Peckham, and knocked at Doctor Milner's door. 

The schoolmaster was not an unkind or unfriendly man, and 
would in any circumstances, there is little doubt, have given Gold- 
smith the shelter he sought. It happened now that he had special 
need of him : sickness disabling himself from the proper school- 
attendance. So, again installed poor usher, week passed over 
week as of old, with suffering, contempt, and many forms of care. 
Milner saw what he endured ; was moved by it ; and told him 
that as soon as health enabled himself to resume the duties of the 
school, he would exert an influence to place his usher in some 
medical appointment at a foreign station. He knew an East India 
director, a Mr. Jones, through whom it might be done. Before 
all things it was what Goldsmith fervently desired. 

And now, with something like the prospect of a settled future 
to bear him up against the uncongenial and uncertain present, 
what leisure he had for other than school labour, he gave to a 
literary project of his own designing. This was natural : for we 
cling with a strange new fondness to what we must soon abandon, 
and it is the strong resolve to separate which most often has made 
separation impossible. Nor, apart from this, is there ground for 
the feeling of surprise, or the charge of vacillating purpose. His 
daily bread provided here, literature again presented itself to his 
thoughts as in his foreign wanderings ; and to have left better 
record of himself than the garbled page of Griffiths's Review, would 
be a comfort in his exile. Somo part of his late experience, so 
dearly bought, should be freely told ; with it could be arranged 



chap, ii.] MAKING SHIFT TO EXIST. 85 

and combined, what store of literary fruit he had gathered in 
his travel ; and no longer commanded by a bookseller, or over- 
awed by an old woman, he might frankly deliver to the world 
some wholesome truths as to the decay of letters and the rewards 
of genius. In this spirit he conceived the Enquiry into the Present 
State of Polite Learning in Europe. And if he had reason bitterly 
to feel, in his own case, that he had failed to break down the 
barriers which encircled the profession of literature, here might a 
helping hand be stretched forth to the relief of others, still 
struggling for a better fate in its difficult environments. 

With this design another expectation arose, — that the publica- 
tion, properly managed, might give him means for the outfit his 
appointment would render necessary. And he bethought him of 
his Irish friends. The zeal so lately professed might now be 
exerted with eifect, and without greatly plaguing either their 
pockets or his own pride. In those days, and indeed until the 
Act of Union was passed, the English writer had no copyright in 
Ireland : it being a part of the independence of Irish booksellers 
to steal from English authors, and of the Irish parliament to pro- 
tect the theft ; just as, not twenty years before this date, that 
excellent native parliament had, on the attempt of a Catholic to 
recover estates which in the manner of the booksellers a Protestant 
had seized, voted ' ' all barristers, solicitors, attorneys, and proctors 
"who should be concerned for him," public enemies! But that 
serviceable use might be made of the early transmission to Ireland 
of a set of English copies of the Enquiry, by one who had zealous 
private friends there, was Goldsmith's not unreasonable feeling ; 
and he would try this, when the time came. Meanwhile he began 
the work ; and it was probably to some extent advanced, when, 
with little savings from the school, and renewed assurances of the 
foreign appointment, Doctor Milner released him from duties 
which the necessity (during the Doctor's illness) of flogging the 
boys as well as teaching them, appears to have made more 
intolerable to the child-loving usher. The reverend Mr. Mitford 
knew a lady whose husband had been at this time under Gold- 
smith's cane ; but with no very serious consequence. 

Escape from the school might not have been so easy, but for 
the lessening chances of Dr. Milner's recovery having made more 
permanent arrangements advisable. Some doubt has been expressed, 
indeed, whether the worthy schoolmaster's illness had not already 
ended fatally ; and if the kindness I have recorded should not rather 
be attributed to his son and successor in the school, Mr. George 
Milner. But other circumstances clearly invalidate this, and show 
that it must have been the elder Milner's. In August 1758, 
however, Goldsmith again had bidden him adieu ; and once more 






86 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 

had secured a respectable town address for his letters, and, 
among the Graingers and Kippises and other tavern acquaintance, 
obtained the old facilities for correspondence with his friends, at 
the Temple-exchange Coffee-house, Temple-bar. 



CHAPTER III. 



ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE FROM LITERATURE. 1758. 

Grainger, his friend Percy, and others of the Griffiths con- 
nection, were at this time busy upon a new magazine : 
™, oq begun with the present year, and dedicated to the " great 
u Mr. Pitt," whose successful coercion of the king made 
him just now more than ever the darling of the people. Griffiths 
was one of the publishing partners in The Grand Magazine of 
Universal Intelligence and Monthly Chronicle of our own Times : 
and perhaps on this account, as well as for the known contributions 
of some of his acquaintance, traces of Goldsmith's hand have been 
sought in the work ; in my opinion without success. In truth the 
first number was hardly out when he went back to the Peckham 
school ; and on his return to London, though he probably eked out 
his poor savings by casual writings here and there, it is certain 
that on the foreign appointment his hopes continued steadily fixed, 
and that the work which was to aid him in his escape from lite- 
rature (the completion of the Enquiry into the State of Polite 
Learning, or, as he called it before publication, the Essay on the 
Present State of Taste and Literature) occupied nearly all his 
thoughts. He was again in London, and again working with the 
pen ; but he was no longer the bookseller's slave, nor was literary 
toil his impassable and hopeless doom. Therefore, in the confi- 
dence of swift liberation, and the hope of the new career that 
brightened in his sanguine heart, he addressed himself cheerily 
enough to the design in hand, and began solicitation of his Irish 
friends. i 

Edward Mills he thought of first, as a person of some influence. 
He was his relative, had been his fellow collegian, and was a pros- 
perous, wealthy man. In a letter to him dated from the Temple- 
exchange Coffee-house, on the 7th of August, and published by 
Bishop Percy, after some allusion to his having given up the 
pursuit of law for the privacy of a country life, he continues, 

It seems you are contented to be merely an happy man ; to be esteemed 
only by your acquaintance — to cultivate your paternal acres — to take unmo- 



chap, in.] ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE FROM LITERATURE. 87 

lested a nap under one of your own hawthorns, or in Mrs. Mills's bed- 
chamber, which even a poet must confess, is rather the most comfortable place 
of the two. But however your resolutions may be altered with regard to your 
situation in life, I persuade myself they are unalterable with regard to your 
friends in it. I cannot think the world has taken such entire possession ot 
that heart (once so susceptible of friendship) as not to have left a corner there 
for a friend or two ; but I flatter myself that even I have my place among 
the number. This I have a claim to from the similitude of our dispositions ; 
or, setting that aside, I can demand it as my right by the most equitable law 
iff nature, I mean that of retaliation : for indeed you have more than youi 
share in mine. I am a man of few professions, and yet this very instant 1 
cannot avoid the painful apprehension that my present professions (which 
speak not half my feelings) should be considered only a pretext to cover a 
request, as I have a request to make. No, my dear Ned, I know you are too 
generous to think so ; and you know me too proud to stoop to mercenary 
insincerity. I have a request it is true to make ; but as I know to whom I 
am a petitioner, I make it without diffidence or confusion. It is in short this, 
I am going to publish a book in London, entitled An Essay on the present 
State of Taste and Literature in Europe. Every work published here the 
printers in Ireland republish there, without giving the author the least con- 
sideration for his copy. I would in this respect disappoint their avarice, and 
have all the additional advantages that may result from the sale of my 
performance there to myself. The book is now printing in London, and I 
have requested Dr. Radcliff, Mr. Lawder, Mr. Bryanton, my brother Mr. Henry 
Goldsmith, and brother-in-law Mr. Hodson, to circulate my proposals among 
their acquaintance. The same request I now make to you ; and have accord- 
ingly given directions to Mr. Bradley, bookseller in Dame-street DubUn, to 
send you a hundred proposals. Whatever subscriptions pursuant to those pro- 
posals, you may receive, when collected, may be transmitted to Mr. Bradley, 
who will give a receipt for the money, and be accountable for the books. I 
shall not, by a paltry apology, excuse myself for putting you to this trouble. 
Were I not convinced that you found more pleasure in doing good-natured 
things, than uneasiness at being employed in them, I should not have singled 
you out on this occasion. It is probable you would comply with such a re- 
quest, if it tended to the encouragement of any man of learning whatsoever ; 
what then may not he expect who has claims of family and friendship to 
enforce his ? 

What indeed may he not freely expect, who is to receive 
nothing ? Nevertheless, there is a worse fool's paradise than that 
of expectation. To teach our tears the easiest way to flow, should 
be no unvalued part of this world's wisdom ; hope is a good friend, 
even when the only one ; and Goldsmith was not the worse for 
expecting, though he received nothing. Mr. Mills left his poor 
requests unheeded, and his letter unacknowledged. Sharking 
booksellers and starving authors might devour each other before 
he would interpose ; being a man, as his old sizar-relative deli- 
cately hinted, with paternal acres as well as boyish friendships to 
cultivate, and fewer thorns of the world to struggle with, than 
hawthorns of his own to sleep under. He lived to repent it 
certainly, and to profess great veneration for the distinguished 
writer to whom he boasted relationship ; but Goldsmith had no 
more pleasant hopes or friendly correspondences to fling away upon 



88 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 

Mr. Mills of Roscommon. Not that even this letter, as it seems 
to me, had been one of very confident expectation. Unusual 
effort is manifest in it ; a reluctance to bring unseemly fancies 
between the wind and Mr. Mills's gentility ; a conventional style 
of balance between the "pleasure" and the "uneasiness" it talks 
about ; in short, a forced suppression of everything in his own 
state that may affront the acres and the hawthorns. 

Seven days afterwards he wrote to Bryanton, with a curious 
contrast of tone and manner. Even Bryanton had not inquired 
for him since the scenes of happier years. The affectionate remem- 
berings of the lonely wanderer, as of the struggling author, he had 
in carelessness, if not in coldness, passed without return ; yet here 
heart spoke to heart, buoyant, unreserved, and sanguine. That 
sorrow lay beneath the greetings, was not to be concealed, else had 
the words which cheerily rose above it been perhaps less sincere ; 
but see, and make profit of it, — how, depressed by unavailing 
labours, and patiently awaiting the disastrous issue of defeat and 
flight, he shows to the last a bright and cordial happiness of soul, 
unconquered and unconquerable. 

The letter, which, like that to Mills, is also dated from the 
Temple coffee-house, was first printed by permission of Bryanton's 
son-in-law, the reverend Doctor Handcock of Dublin, and where 
the paper is torn or has been worn away by time, there are several 
erasures that the reader will easily supply. 

Why in so long an absence was I never made a partner in your concerns ? 
To hear of your successes would have given me the utmost pleasure ; and a 
communication of your very disappointments, would divide the uneasiness I too 
frequently feel for my own. Indeed, my dear Bob, you don't conceive how 
unkindly you have treated one whose circumstances afford him few prospects 
of pleasure, except those reflected from the happiness of his friends. However, 
since you have not let me hear from you, I have in some measure dis- 
appointed your neglect by frequently thinking of you. Every day do I 
remember the calm anecdotes of your life, from the fireside to the easy- 
chair ; recall the various adventures that first cemented our friendship, — 
the school, the college, or the tavern ; preside in fancy over your cards ; 
and am displeased at your bad play when the rubber goes against you, though 
not with all that agony of soul as when I once was your partner. 

Is it not strange that two of such like affections should be so much separated 
and so differently employed as we are ? You seem placed at the centre of 
fortune's wheel, and let it revolve never so fast, seem insensible of the 
n t 'on. I seem to have been tied to the circumference, and .... dieagree- 
a| round like an whore in a whirligig .... down with an intention to 
cl , and yet methinks .... my resentment already. The truth is, I am 

a i f\ . . regard to you ; I may attempt to bluster, Anacreon, my 

heart is respondent only to softer affections. And yet, now I think on't 
again, I will be angry. God's curse, sir ! who am I ? Eh ! what am I ? Do 
you know whom you have offended ? A man whose character may one of these 
days be mentioned with profound respect in a German comment or Dutch 
dictionary ; whose name you will probably hear ushered in by a Doctissimus 



chap, in.] ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE FROM LITERATURE. 89 

Doctissimorum, or heel-pieced with a long Latin termination. Think how 
Goldsmithius, or Gubblegurchius, or some such sound, as rough as a nutmeg- 
grater, will become me ? Think of that ! — God's curse, sir ! who am I ? 
I must own my ill-natured contemporaries have not hitherto paid me those 
honours I have had such just reason to expect. I have not yet seen my face 
reflected in all the lively display of red and white paints on any sign-posts in 
the suburbs. Your handkerchief weavers seem as yet unacquainted with my 
merits or my physiognomy, and the very snuff-box makers appear to have 
forgot their respect. Tell them all from me, they are a set of Gothic, bar- 
barous, ignorant scoundrels. There will come a day, no doubt it will — I beg 
you may live a couple of hundred years longer only to see the day — when the 
Scaligers and Daciers will vindicate my character, give learned editions of my 
labours, and bless the times with copious comments on the text. You shall 
see how they will fish up the heavy scoundrels who disregard me now, or will 
then offer to cavil at my productions. How will they bewail the times that 
suffered so much genius to lie neglected. If ever my works find their way 
to Tartary or China, I know the consequence. Suppose one of your Chinese 
Owanowitzers instructing one of your Tartarian Chinanobacchhi — you see I 
use Chinese names to show my own erudition, as I shall soon make our 
Chinese talk like an Englishman to show his. This may be the subject of 
the lecture. 

Oliver Goldsmith flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He 
lived to be an hundred and three years old .... age may justly be styled 

the sun of ... . and the Confucius of Europe learned 

world, were anonymous, and have probably been lost, because united with 
those of others. The first avowed piece the world has of his is entitled an 
' Essay on the present State of Taste and Literature in Europe,' — a work 
well worth its weight in diamonds. In this he profoundly explains what 
learning is, and what learning is not. In this he proves that blockheads 
are not men of wit, and yet that men of wit are actually blockheads. 

But as I choose neither to tire my Chinese Philosopher, nor you, nor 
myself, I must discontinue the oration, in order to give you a good pause 
for admiration ; and I find myself most violently disposed to admire too. Let 
me, then, stop my fancy to take a view of my future self ; and, as the boys 
say, light down to see myself on horseback. Well, now I am down, where 
the devil is 1 1 Oh Gods ! Gods ! here in a garret, writing for bread, and 
expecting to be dunned for a milk-score ! However, dear Bob, whether in 
penury or affluence, serious or gay, I am ever wholly thine, 

Oliver Goldsmith. 

Give my — no, not compliments neither, but something . . . most warm and 
sincere wish that you can conceive, to your mother', Mrs. Bryanton, to Miss 
Bryanton, to yourself ; and if there be a favourite dog in the family, let me 
be remembered to it. 

" Id a garret, writing for bread, and expecting to be dunned 
"for a milk-score." Such, was the ordinary fate of letters in that 
age. There had been a Christian religion extant for now seventeen 
hundred and fifty-seven years ; for so long a time had the world 
been acquainted with its spiritual necessities and responsibilities ; 
yet here, in the middle of the eighteenth century, was the 
eminence ordinarily conceded to the spiritual teacher, to the man 
who comes upon the earth to lift his fellow men above its miry 
ways. He is up in a garret, writing for bread he cannot get, and 






90 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. 



dunned for a milk-score he cannot pay. And age after age, the 
prosperous man comfortably contemplates it, decently regrets it, 
and is glad to think it no business of his ; and in that year of 
grace and of Goldsmith's suffering, had doubtless adorned his 
dining -100m with the Disbrest Poet of the inimitable Mr. Hogarth, 




and invited laughter from 
easy guests at the garret and 
the milk-score. Yet could 
they, those worthy men, 
have known the danger to 
even their worldliest com- 
forts then impending, per- 
haps they had not laughed 
so heartily. For were not 
these very citizens to be in- 
debted to Goldsmith in after 
years, for cheerful hours, and happy thoughts, and 
fancies that would smooth life's path to their 
children's children ? And now, without a friend, 

I! | 'ill 

: i|J with hardly bread to eat, and uncheered by a hearty 
word or a smile to help him on, he sits in his melancholy 
garret, and such fancies die within him. It is but an accident 
now, that the good Vicar shall be born, that the Man in Black 
shall dispense his charities, that Croaker shall grieve, Tony Lumpkin 
laugh, or the sweet soft echo of the Deserted Village come for ever 
back upon the heart, in charity, and kindness, and sympathy with 
the poor. For despair is in the garret, and the poet, over- mastered 
by distress, seeks only the means of flight and exile. With a day- 
dream to his old Irish playfellow, a sigh for the "heavy scoun- 
" drels" who disregard him, and a wail for the age to which genius 
is a mark of mockery ; he turns to that first avowed piece, which, 
being also his last, is to prove that "blockheads are not men of 
"wit, and yet that men of wit are actually blockheads." 



ohap. in.] ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE FROM LITERATURE. 91 

A proposition which men of wit have laboured at from early- 
times, have proved in theory, and worked out in practice. "How 
" many base men," shrieked one of them in Elizabeth's day, who felt 
that his wit had but made him the greater blockhead, " how many 
" base men, that want those parts I have, do enjoy content at will, 
" and have wealth at command ! I call to mind a cobbler, that is 
" worth five hundred pounds ; an hostler, that has built a goodly 
" inn ; a carman in a leather pilche, that has whipt a thousand 
"pounds out of his horse's tail : and I ask if I have more than 
" these. Am I not better born ? am I not better brought up ? 
" yea, and better favoured ! And yet am I for ever to sit up late, 
" and rise early, and contend with the cold, and converse with 
" scarcity, and be a beggar ? How am I crossed, or whence is this 
"curse, that a scrivener should be better paid than a scholar!" 
Poor Nash ! he had not even Goldsmith's fortitude, and his doleful 
outcry for money was a lamentable exhibition, out of which no good 
could come. But the feeling in the miserable man's heart, struck 
at the root of a secret discontent which not the strongest man can 
resist altogether ; and which Goldsmith did not affect to repress, 
when he found himself, as he says, ' ' starving in those streets where 
" Butler and Otway starved before him." 

The words are in a letter, written the day after that to Bryanton, 
bearing the same date of Temple-exchange Coffee-house, and sent 
to Mrs. Lawder, the Jane Contarine of his happy old Kilmore time, 
to whom he signs himself her "ever affectionate kinsman." Mr. 
Mills afterwards begged this letter of the Lawders, and from the 
friend to whom he gave it, Lord Carleton's nephew, it was copied 
for Bishop Percy by Edmond Malone. As in those already given, 
the style, with its simple air of authorship, is eminently good and 
happy. The assumption of a kind of sturdy independence, the 
playful admission of well-known faults, and the incidental slight 
confession of sorrows, have graceful relation to the person addressed, 
and the terms on which they stood of old. His uncle was now in 
a hopeless state of living death, from which, in a few months, the 
grave released him ; and to this the letter affectingly refers. 

If you should ask, why in an interval of so many years you never heard 
from me, permit me, madam, to ask the same question. I have the best 
excuse in recrimination. I wrote to Kilmore from Leyden in Holland, from 
Louvain in Flanders, and Rouen in France, but received no answer. To what 
could I attribute this silence but to displeasure or forgetfulness ? "Whether 
I was right in my conjecture I do not pretend to determine ; but this I must 
ingenuously own, that I have a thousand times in my turn endeavoured to 
forget them, whom I could not but look upon as forgetting me. I have 
attempted to blot their names from my memory, and, I confess it, spent 
whole days in efforts to tear their image from my heart. Could I have succeeded, 
you had not now been troubled with this renewal of a discontinued corre- 



92 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ir. 

spondence ; but, as every effort the restless make to procure sleep serves but 
to keep them waking, all my attempts contributed to impress what I would 
forget, deeper on my imagination. But this subject I would willingly turn 
from, and yet, 'for the soul of me,' I can't till I have said all. 

I was, madam, when I discontinued writing to Kilmore, in such circum- 
stances, that all my endeavours to continue your regards might be attributed to 
wrong motives. My letters might be looked upon as the petitions of a beggar, 
and not the offerings of a friend ; while all my professions, instead of being 
considered as the result of disinterested esteem, might be ascribed to venal 
insincerity. I believe indeed you had too much generosity to place them in 
such a light, but I could not bear even the shadow of such a suspicion. The 
most delicate friendships are always most sensible of the slightest invasion, and 
the strongest jealousy is ever attendant on the warmest regard. I could not 
— I own I could not — continue a correspondence ; for every acknowledgment 
for past favours might be considered as an indirect request for future ones, 
and where it might be thought I gave my heart from a motive of gratitude 
alone, when I was conscious of having bestowed it on much more disin- 
terested principles. 

It is true, this conduct might have been simple enough, but yourself must 
confess it was in character. Those who know me at all know that I have 
always been actuated by different principles from the rest of mankind, and 
while none regarded the interest of his friend more, no man on earth regarded 
his own less. I have often affected bluntness to avoid the imputation of 
flattery, have frequently seemed to overlook those merits too obvious to escape 
notice, and pretended disregard to those instances of good nature and good 
sense which I could not fail tacitly to applaud ; and all this lest I should be 
ranked amongst the grinning tribe, who say ' very trae ' to all that is said, 
who fill a vacant chair at a tea-table, whose narrow souls never moved in 
a wider circle than the circumference of a guinea, and who had rather be 
reckoning the money in your pocket than the virtue of your breast. All this, 
I say, I have done, and a thousand other very silly though very disin- 
terested things in my time, and for all which no soul cares a farthing about me. 
God's curse, madam ! is it to be wondered that he should once in his life 
forget you, who has been all his life forgetting himself ? 

However, it is probable you may one of those days see me turned into a 
perfect hunks, and as dark and intricate as a mouse-hole. I have already 
given my landlady orders for an entire reform in the state of my finances. I 
declaim against hot suppers, drink less sugar in my tea, and check my grate 
with brickbats. Instead of hanging my room with pictures, I intend to adorn 
it with maxims of frugality. Those Avill make pretty furniture enough, and 
won't be a bit too expensive ; for I shall draw them all out with my own 
hands, and my landlady's daughter shall frame them with the parings of my 
black waistcoat. Each maxim is to be inscribed on a sheet of clean paper, 
and wrote with my best pen : of which the following will serve as a specimen. 
Look sharp : Mind the main chance ; Money is money now ; If you have a 
thousand pounds you can put your hands by your sides, and say you a,re 
worth a thousand pounds every day of the year ; Take a farthing from a 
hundred, and it will be a hundred no longer. Thus, which way soever I 
turn my eyes, they are sure to meet one of those friendly monitors ; and as we 
are told of an actor who hung his room round with looking-glass to correct the 
defects of his person, my apartment shall be furnished in a peculiar manner, to 
correct the errors of my mind. 

Faith ! Madam, I heartily wish to be rich, if it were only for this reason, to 
say without a blush how much I esteem you ; but, alas ! I have many a fatigue 
to encounter before that happy time comes, when your poor old simple friend 
may again give a loose to the luxuriance of his nature, sitting by Kilmore 



chap. iv.J ESCAPE PREVENTED. 93 

fire-side, recount the various adventures of a hard-fought life, laugh over the 
follies of the day, join his flute to your harpsichord, and forget that ever he 
starved in those streets where Butler and Otway starved before him. 

And now I mention those great names — My uncle ! — he is no more that 
soul of fire as when once I knew him. Newton and Swift grew dim with age 
as well as he. But what shall I say ? — his mind was too active an inha- 
bitant not to disorder the feeble mansion of its abode ; for the richest jewels 
soonest wear their settings. Yet who but the fool would lament his condition ! 
He now forgets the calamities of Life. Perhaps indulgent heaven has given him 
a foretaste of that tranquillity here, which he so well deserves hereafter. 

But I must come to business ; for business, as one of my maxims tells me, 
must be minded or lost. I am going to publish in London, a book entitled 
The Present State of Taste and Literature in Europe. The booksellers in 
Ireland republish every performance there without making the author any 
consideration. I would, in this respect, disappoint their avarice, and have all 
the profits of my labour to myself. I must therefore request Mr. Lawder to 
circulate among his friends and acquaintances a hundred of my proposals, which 
I have given the bookseller, Mr. Bradley in Dame-street, directions to send to 
him. ... I would be the last man on earth to have my labours go a-begging ; 
but if I know Mr. Lawder (and sure I ought to know him), he will accept 
the employment with pleasure. All I can say — if he writes a book, I will 
get him two hundred subscribers, and those of the best wits in Europe. 

In none of these letters, it will be observed, is allusion made to 
the expected appointment. To make jesting boast of a visionary 
influence with two hundred of the best wits in Europe, was 
pleasanter than to make grave confession of himself as a wit taking 
sudden flight from the scene of defeat and failure. It was the old 
besetting weakness. But shortly after the date of the last letter, 
the appointment was received. It was that of medical officer to one 
of the factories on the coast of Coromandel ; was forwarded by 
Doctor Milner's friend Mr. Jones, the East India director ; and the 
worthy schoolmaster did not outlive more than a few weeks this 
honest redemption of his promise. The desired escape was at last 
effected, and the booksellers might look around them for another 
drudge more patient and obedient than Oliver Goldsmith. 



CHAPTEK IV. 

— ♦ — 

ESCAPE PREVENTED. 1758. 



It was now absolutely necessary that the proposed change in 
Goldsmith's life should be broken to his Irish friends ; and 
he wrote to his brother Henry. The letter (which con- m. oA 
tained also the design of a heroi-comical poem at which he 
had been occasionally working) is lost ; but some passages of one 
of nearly the same date to Mr. Hodson have had a better fortune. 



94 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 

It began with obvious allusion to some staid and rather 
gratuitous reproach from the prosperous brother-in-law. 

You cannot expect regularity in one who is regular in nothing. Nay, were 
I forced to love you by rule, I dare venture to say that I could never do it 
sincerely. Take me, then, with all my faults. Let me write when I please, 
for you see I say what 1 please, and am only thinking aloud when writing to 
you. I suppose you have heard of my intention of going to the East Indies. 
The place of my destination is one of the factories on the coast of Coromandel, 
and I go' in quality of physician .and surgeon ; for which the company has 
signed my warrant, which has already cost me ten pounds. I must also pay 
501. for my passage, and ten pounds for my sea stores : and the other 
incidental expenses of my equipment will amount to 601. or 701. more. The 
salary is but trifling, namely 1001. per annum ; but the other advantages, if 
a person be prudent, are considerable. The practice of the place, if I am 
rightly informed, generally amounts to not less than one thousand pounds per 
annum, for which the appointed physician has an exclusive privilege. This, 
with the advantages resulting from trade, and the high interest which money 
bears, viz. 201. per cent, are the inducements which persuade me to undergo 
the fatigues of sea, the dangers of war, and the still greater dangers of the 
climate ; which induce me to leave a place ' where I am every day gaining 
friends and esteem, and where I might enjoy all the conveniences of life. 

The same weakness which indulged itself with fine clothes when 
the opportunity offered, is that which prompts these fine words in 
an hour of such dire extremity. Of the "friends and esteem " he 
was gaining, of the " conveniences of life " that were awaiting him 
to enjoy, these pages have told, and have more to tell: but why, 
in the confident hope of brighter days, dwell on the darkness of 
the past, or show the squalor that still surrounded him 1 Of 
already sufficiently low esteem were wit and intellect in Ireland, 
to give purse-fed ignorance another triumph over them, or again 
needlessly invite to himself the contempts and sneers of old. Yet, 
though the sadness he almost wholly suppressed while the appoint- 
ment was but in expectation, there was at this moment less reason 
to indulge, he found it a far from successful effort to seem other 
than he was, even thus ; and it marked with a somewhat painful 
distraction of feeling and phrase this letter to Mr. Hodson. 

I am certainly wrong not to be contented with what I already possess, 
trifling as it is ; for should I ask myself one serious question, — What is it I 
want ? — What can I answer ? My desires are as capricious as the big-bellied 
woman's, who longed for a piece of her husband's nose. I have no certainty, 
it is true ; but why cannot I do as some men of more merit, who have lived 
on more precarious terms ? Scarron used jestingly to call himself the marquis 
of Quenault, which was the name of the bookseller that employed him ; and 
why may not I assert my privilege and quality on the same pretensions ? Yet 
upon deliberation, whatever airs I give myself on this side of the water, my 
dignity, I fancy, would be evaporated before I reached the other. I know 
you have in Ireland a very indifferent idea of a man who writes for bread ; 
though Swift and Steele did so in the earliest part of their lives. You imagine, 
I suppose, that every author by profession lives in a garret, wears shabby 




chap, iv.] ESCAPE PREVENTED. 95 

cloaths, and converses with the meanest company. Yet I do not believe there 
is one single writer, who has abilities to translate a French novel, that does 
not keep better company, wear finer cloaths, and live more genteelly, than 
many who pride themselves for nothing else in Ireland. I confess it again, 
my dear Dan, that nothing but the wildest ambition could prevail on me to 
leave the enjoyment of the refined conversation which I am sometimes 
admitted to partake in, for uncertain fortune, and paltry shew. You cannot 
conceive how I am sometimes divided. To leave all that is dear to me gives 
me pain : but when I consider, I may possibly acquire a genteel indepen- 
dence for life ; when I think of that dignity which philosophy claims, to raise 
itself above contempt and ridicule ; when I think thus, I eagerly long to 
embrace every opportunity of separating myself from the vulgar as much in 
my circumstances, as I am already in my sentiments. I am going to publish 
a book, for an account of which I refer you to a letter which I wrote to my 
brother Goldsmith. Circulate for me among your acquaintances a hundred 
proposals, which I have given orders may be sent to you : and if, in pur- 
suance of such circulation, you should receive any subscriptions, let them, 
when collected, be transmitted to Mr. Bradley, who will give a receipt for 
the same. . . I know not how my desire of seeing Ireland, which had so long 
slept, has again revived with so much ardour. So weak is my temper, and 
so unsteady, that I am frequently tempted, particularly when low-spirited, 
to return home and leave my fortune, though just beginning to look kinder. 
But it shall not be. In five or six years I hope to indulge these transports. 
I find I want constitution, and a strong steady disposition, which alone makes 
men great. I will however correct my faults, since I am conscious of them. 

"With such professions weakness continues to indulge itself, and 
faults are perpetuated. But some allowances are due. Of the 
Irish society he knew so well, and so often sarcastically painted, 
these Irish friends were clearly very notable specimens, with whom 
small indeed was his chance of decent consideration, if a garret, 
shabby clothes, and conversation with the meanest company, were 
set hopelessly forth as his inextricable doom. The error lay in 
giving faith of any kind to such external aid, and so weakening 
the help that rested in himself ; for when the claim of ten pounds for 
his appointment-warrant came upon him, it found him less pre- 
pared because of vague expectations raised on these letters to 
Mills and the Lawders. But any delay might be fatal ; and in 
that condition of extremity, whose "wants," alas, are anything 
but "capricious," he bethought him of the Critical Review, and 
went to its proprietor, Mr. Archibald Hamilton. 

Soon after he left Griffiths he had written an article for his 
rival, which appeared in November 1757 ; and as his contributions 
then stopped where they began, I am disposed to connect both his 
joining at the time so suddenly, and as suddenly quitting, the 
Critical Review, with a letter which Smollett published in that 
same November number " To the Old Gentlewoman who directs 
" the Monthly." For though Goldsmith might not object to avenge 
some part of his own quarrel under cover of that of Smollett, he 
would hardly have relished the too broad allusion in which 



96 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iij 

"goody" and " gammer" Griffiths were reminded that "though 
"we never visited your garrets, we know what sort of Doctors 
"and authors you employ as journeymen in your manufacture. 
"Did you in your dotage mistake the application, by throwing 
"those epithets at us which so properly belong to your own 
"understrappers?" But, whatever may have caused his secession 
then, now he certainly applied again to Hamilton, a shrewd man, 
who had just made a large fortune out of Smollett's History, and, 
though not very liberal in his payments, already not unconscious 
of the value of Griffiths's discarded writer. The result of the 
interview was the publication, in the new-year number, of two 
more papers by Goldsmith, apparently in continuation of the first. 
All three had relation to a special subject; and, as connected with 
such a man's obscurest fortunes, have an interest hardly less than 
that of writings connected with his fame. An author is seen in 
the effulgence of established repute, or discovered by his cries of 
struggling distress. By both " you shall know him." 

Ovid was the leading topic in all three. His Fasti, translated 
by a silly master of a Wandsworth boarding-school, named Massey ; 
his Epistles, translated by a pedantic pedagogue named Barrett 
(a friend of Johnson and Cave) ; and an antidote to his Art of Love, 
in an Art of Pleasing by Mr. Marriott ; were the matters taken in 
hand. The Art of Pleasing was treated with playful contempt, 
and Mr. Massey's Fasti fared still worse. Here Goldsmith closed a 
series of unsparing comparisons of the original with his trans- 
lator, by asking leave ' ' to remind Mr. Massey of the old Italian 
"proverb" (IZ tradattores tradatore) "and to hope he will never 
"for the future traduce and injure any of those poor ancients who 
"never injured him, by thus pestering the world with such trans- 
lations as even his own schoolboys ought to be whipped for." 
Nor with less just severity was the last of these unhappy gentlemen 
rebuked. With lively power Goldsmith dissected the absur- 
dities of Mr. Barrett's version of poor ill-treated Ovid's Epistles ; 
showed that the translator was a bad critic, and no poet; and 
passed from lofty to low in his illustrations with amusing effect. 
Giving two or three instances of Mr. Barrett's skill in "paren- 
"thetically clapping one sentence within another," this, pursued 
Goldsmith, "contributes not a little to obscurity; and obscurity, 
1 ' we all know, is nearly allied to admiration. Thus, when the 
"reader begins a sentence which he finds pregnant with another, 
"which still teems with a third, and so on, he feels the same 
' ' surprise which a countryman does at Bartholomew fair. Hocus 
"shows a bag, in appearance empty; slap, and out come a dozen 
"new laid eggs; slap again, and the number is doubled; but 
" what is his amazement, when it swells with the hen that laid 



chap, iv.] ESCAPE PREVENTED. 97 

"them!" The poetry and criticism disposed of, the scholarship 
shared their fate. Mr. Barrett being master of the thriving 
grammar-school of Ashford in Kent, and having the consequence 
and pretension of a so-called learned man, we are not going, said 
Goldsmith, "to permit an ostentation of learning pass for merit, 
r nor to give a pedant quarter upon the score of his industry alone, 
"even though he took refuge behind Arabic, or powdered his hair 
"with Hieroglyphics." 

In the garret of Griffiths, he would hardly have conceded so 
much; and since then, the world had not been teaching him 
literary charity. These Ovid translations had not unnaturally 
turned his thoughts upon the master of the art ; on him who was 
the father of authorship by profession ; and the melancholy image 
which arose to a mind so strongly disposed to entertain it then, of 
great "Dryden ever poor," and obliged by his miseries to suffer 
fleeting performances to be " quartered on the lasting merit of his 
"name," did not the more entitle to any mercy which truth could 
not challenge for them, these gentlemen of a more thriving pro- 
fession who had thrust themselves uninvited and unqualified on 
the barren land of authorship. ' ' They may be good and useful 
" members of society," he said, " without being poets. The regions 
" of taste can be travelled only by a few, and even those often find 
" indifferent accommodation by the way. Let such as have not got 
" a passport from nature be content with happiness, and leave the 
"poet the unrivalled possession of his misery, his garret, and his 
"fame." So will truth force its way, when out of Irish hearing. 
The friend <, the esteem, and the conveniences, of the poet's life, are 
briefly summed up here. His misery, his garret, and his fame. 

With part of the money received from Hamilton he moved into 
new lodgings : took "unrivalled possession" of a fresh garret, on 
a first floor. The house was number twelve, Green Arbour-court, 
Old Bailey, between the Old Bailey and the site of Fleet- 
market : and stood in the right hand corner of the court, as 
the wayfarer approached it from Farringdon-street by an appro- 
priate access of "Break-neck-steps." Green Arbour-court is now 
gone for ever ; and of its miserable wretchedness, for a little 
time replaced by the more decent comforts of the stabling and 
lofts of a waggon office, not a vestige remains. The houses, 
crumbling and tumbling in Goldsmith's day, were fairly rotted 
down some twenty years since ; and it became necessary, 
for safety sake, to remove what time had spared. But Mr. 
Washington Irving saw them first, and with reverence had described 
them, for Goldsmith's sake. Through alleys, courts, and blind 
passages ; traversing Fleet-market, and thence turning along a 
narrow street to the bottom of a long steep flight of stone steps; 

F 



98 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. 



[book II. 



he made good his toilsome way up into Green Arbour-court. He 
found it a small square of tall and miserable houses, the very- 
intestines of which seemed turned inside out, to judge from the old 
garments and frippery that fluttered from every window. " It 
"appeared," he says in his Tales of a Traveller, "to be a region 
" of washerwomen, and lines were stretched about the little square, 
"on which clothes were dangling to dry." The disputed right to 
a wash-tub was going on when he entered ; heads in mob-caps 
were protruded from every window ; and the loud clatter of vulgar 
tongues was assisted by the shrill pipes of swarming children, 
nestled and cradled in every procreant chamber of the hive. The 




to 



whole scene, in short, was one of whose unchanged resemblance 
the scenes of former days I have since found curious corroboration, 
in a magazine engraving of the place nigh half a century old. 
Here were the tall faded houses, with heads out of window at 
every story ; the dirty neglected children ; the bawling slipshod 
women ; in one corner, clothes hanging to dry, and in another the 
cure of smoky chimneys announced. Without question, the same 
squalid, squalling colony, which it then was, it had been in 
Goldsmith's time. ' He would compromise with the children for 
occasional cessation of their noise, by occasional cakes or sweet- 
meats, or by a tune upon his flute, for which all the court 
assembled ; he would talk pleasantly with the poorest of his 
neighbours, and was long recollected to have greatly enjoyed the 






chap, iv.] ESCAPE PREVENTED. 99 

talk of a working watchmaker in the court ; every night, he would 
risk his neck at those steep stone stairs ; every day, for his clothes 
had become too ragged to submit to daylight scrutiny, he would 
keep within his dirty, naked, unfurnished room, with its single 
wooden chair and window bench. And that was Goldsmith's home. 
On a certain night in the beginning of November 1758, his 
ascent of Break-neck-steps must have had unwonted gloom. He 
had learnt the failure of his new hope : the Coromandel appoint- 
ment was his no longer. In what way this mischance so unexpectedly 
occurred, it would now be hopeless to enquire ; no explanation 
could be had from the dying Doctor Milner ; none was given by 
himself ; and he always afterwards withheld allusion to it, with 
even studious care. It is quite possible, though no authority exists 
for the assertion, that doubts may have arisen of his competence to 
discharge the duties of the appointment, and what followed a few 
months later will be seen to give warrant for such a surmise ; but 
even supposing this to have been the real motive, there is no 
ground for suspecting that such a motive was alleged. The most 
likely supposition would probably be, that failure in getting 
together means for his outfit with sufficient promptitude, was 
made convenient excuse for transferring the favour to another. 
That it was any failure of his own courage at the prospect of so 
long an exile, or that he never proposed more by his original 
scheme than a foreign flight for two or three years, has no other or 
better foundation than the Hodson letter : on which authority it 
would also follow, that he remained contented with what he 
already possessed, subdued his capricious wants, and turned to the 
friends, the esteem, the refined conversation, and all the con- 
veniences of life, which awaited him in Green Arbour-court, with 
a new and virtuous resolve of quiet thankfulness. 

Alas ! far different were the feelings with which he now ascended 
Break-neck-steps ; far different his mournful conviction, that, but 
to flee from the misery that surrounded him, no office could be 
mean, no possible endurance hard. His determination was taken 
at once : probably grounded on the knowledge of some passages in 
the life of Smollett, and of his recent acquaintance Grainger. He 
would present himself at Surgeons' Hall for examination as a 
hospital mate : an appointment sufficiently undesirable, to be found 
always of tolerably easy attainment by the duly qualified. 

But he must have decent clothes to present himself in : the 
solitary suit in which he crept between the court and the coffee- 
house, being only fit for service after nightfall. He had no 
resource but to apply to Griffiths, with whom he had still some 
small existing connection, and from whom his recent acceptance at 
the Critical, increasing his value with a vulgar mind, might help 

f 2 



100 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 

in exacting aid. The bookseller, to whom the precise temporary- 
purpose for which the clothes were wanted does not seem to have 
been told, consented to furnish them on certain conditions. Gold- 
smith was to write at once four articles (he had given three to the 
Critical) for the Monthly Review. Griffiths would then become 
security with a tailor for a new suit of clothes ; which were either 
to be returned, or the debt for them discharged, within a given 
time. This pauper proposal acceded to, Goldsmith doubtless 
returned to Green Arbour-court with the four books under his 
arm. 

They were : Some Enquiries Concerning the First Inhabitants of 
Europe, by a member of the Society of Antiquaries, known after- 
wards as Francis Wise, and Thomas Warton's friend ; Anselm 
Bayly 1 s Introduction to Languages ; the Pentalogia of Doctor 
Burton ; and a new Translation of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations. 
The notices of them thus extorted made due appearance, as the first 
four articles of the Monthly Review for December 1758 ; the 
tailor was then called in, and the compact completed. 

Equipped in his new suit, and one can well imagine with what 
an anxious, hopeful, quaking heart, Goldsmith offered himself for 
examination at Surgeons' Hall (the new building erected six years 
before in the Old Bailey), on the 21st December. "The beadle 
" called my name," says Roderick Random, when he found himself 
in similar condition at that place of torture, ' ' with a voice that 
' •' made me tremble as much as if it had been the sound of the last 
' ' trumpet : however there was no remedy : I was conducted into 
"a large hall, where I saw about a dozen of grim faces sitting at 
" a long table, one of whom bade me come forward in such an 
" imperious tone, that I was actually for a minute or two bereft of 
"my senses." Whether the same process, conducted through a 
like memorable scene, bereft poor Goldsmith altogether of his, 
cannot now be ascertained. All that is known, is told in a dry 
extract from the books of the College of Surgeons. " At a Court 
" of Examiners held at tlie Theatre 21st December, 1758. Present " 
— the names are not given, but there is a long list of the candidates 
who passed, in the midst of which these occur : "James Bernard, 
"mate to an hospital. Oliver Goldsmith, found not qualified for 
"ditto." A rumour of this rejection long existed, and on a hint 
from Maton the king's physician, the above entry was found. 

A harder sentence, a more cruel doom, than this at the time 
must have seemed, even the Old Bailey has not often been witness 
to ; yet, far from blaming that worthy court of examiners, should 
we not rather feel that much praise is due to them ? That they 
really did their duty in rejecting the short, thick, dull, ungainly, 
over-anxious, over-dressed, simple-looking Irishman who presented 



chap, v.] DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 101 

himself that memorable day, can hardly, I think, be doubted ; but 
unconsciously they also did a great deal more. They found him 
not qualified to be a surgeon's mate, and left him qualified to heal 
the wounds and abridge the sufferings of all the world. They 
found him querulous with adversity, given up to irresolute fears, 
too much blinded with failures and sorrows to see the divine 
uses to which they tended still ; and from all this, their sternly 
just decision resolutely drove him back. While the door of 
the surgeons' hall was shut upon him that day, the gate of the 
beautiful mountain was slowly opening. Much of the valley of 
the shadow he had still indeed to pass ; but every outlet save the 
one was closed upon him, it was idle any longer to strike or 
struggle against the visions which sprang up in his desolate path, 
and as he so passed steadily if not cheerily on, he saw them fade 
and become impalpable before him. Steadily, then, if not cheerily, 
for some months more ! "Sir," said Johnson, "the man who has 
"vigour may walk to the East just as well as to the West, if he 
" happens to turn his head that way." So, honour to the court of 
examiners, I say, for that whether he would or would not they 
turned back his head to the East ! The hopes and promise of the 
world have a perpetual springtime there ; and Goldsmith was 
hereafter to enjoy them, briefly for himself, but for the world 
unceasingly. 



CHAPTEE V. 



DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 1758—1759. 

It was four days after the rejection at Surgeons' Hall, the 
Christmas day of 1758, when, to the ordinary filth and 
noise of number twelve in Green Arbour-court, there was ™, ^ 
added an unusual lamentation and sorrow. An incident 
had occurred, of which, painful as were the consequences involved 
in it, the precise details can but be surmised and guessed at, and 
must be received with that allowance, though doubtless in the 
main correct. It would appear that the keeper of this wretched 
lodging had been suddenly dragged by bailiifs from his home on 
the previous night, and his wife, with loud wailings, now sought 
the room of her poorer lodger. He was in debt to the unfortunate 
couple, who, for the amusement of their children by his flute, had 
been kind to him according to their miserable means : and it was 
the woman's sobbing petition that he should try to help them. 
There was but one way ; and in the hope, through Hamilton or 



102 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. 



[book II. 



Griffiths, to be able still to meet the tailor's debt, the gay suit in 

which he went to Surgeons' Hall, and in which he was dressed for 

his doleful holiday, appears to have 
been put off and carried to the 
pawnbroker's. Nor had a week 
passed, before the pangs of his own 
destitution sharply struck him 
again ; and, without other remain- 
ing means of earthly aid, for death 
had taken in Doctor Milner his ap- 
parently last friend, he carried the 
four books he had recently reviewed 
for Griffiths to a neighbouring 
house, and left them in pledge with 
an acquaintance for a trifling loan. 
It was hardly done when a letter 
from Griffiths was put into his hand, 

peremptorily demanding the return of the books and the suit of 

clothes, or instant payment for both. 




be presumed from the poor debtor's second letter : the only 
one preserved of this unseemly correspondence. He appears first 
to have written in a tone of mixed astonishment, anger, and 
solicitation ; to have prayed for some delay ; and to have been 
met by coarse insult, threats, and the shameless imputation of 
crime. These forced from him the rejoinder found in the bookseller's 
papers, endorsed by Griffiths with the writer's name, and as u Rec d ' 
"in Jan y - 1759;" which passed afterwards into the manuscript 
collections of Mr. Heber, and is now in my possession. The 
appearance of this remarkable letter harmonises with its contents, 
for there is nothing of the freedom or boldness of hand in it which 
one may perceive in his ordinary manuscript. The original has 
been followed with the strictest accuracy in the copy here given, 
and it will be observed that the pointing is imperfect and con- 
fused, nor is there any break or paragraph from the first line to 
the signature. But all concealment at least is ended, and stern 
plain truth is told. 

Sir, I know of no misery but a gaol to which my own imprudencies and 
your letter seem to point. I have seen it inevitable these three or four weeks, 
and, by heavens ! request it as a favour, as a favour that may prevent some- 
what more fatal. I have been some years struggling with a wretched being, 
with all that contempt which indigence brings with it, with all those strong 
passions which make contempt insupportable. What then has a gaol that is 
formidable, I shall at least have the society of wretches, and such is to me 
true society. I tell you again and again I am now neither able nor willing to 
pay you a farthing, but I will be punctual to any appointment you or the 



chap, v.] DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 103 

taylor shall make ; thus far at least I do not act the sharper, since unable to pay 
my debts one way I would willingly give some security another. No Sir, had I 
been a sharper, had I been possessed of less good nature and native generosity 
I might surely now have been in. better circumstances. I am guilty I own of 
meannesses which poverty unavoidably brings with it, my reflections are filled 
with repentance for my imprudence but not with any remorse for being a 
villain, that may be a character you unjustly charge me with. Your books I 
can assure you are neither pawn'd nor sold, but in the custody of a friend from 
whom my necessities oblig'd me to borrow some money, whatever becomes of 
my person, you shall have them in a month. It is very possible both the 
reports you have heard and your own suggestions may have brought you false 
information with respect to my character, it is very possible that the man 
whom you now regard with detestation may inwardly burn with grateful 
resentment, it is very possible that upon a second perusal of the letter I sent 
you, you may see the workings of a mind strongly agitated with gratitude and 
jealousy, if such circumstances should appear at least spare invective 'till my 
book with Mr. Dodsley shall be publish' d, and then perhaps you may see the 
bright side of a mind when my professions shall not appear the dictates of 
necessity but of choice. You seem to think Dr. Milner knew me not. Per- 
haps so ; but he was a man I shall ever honour ; but I have friendship only 
with the dead ! I ask pardon for taking up so much time. Nor shall I add 
to it by any other professions than that I am Sir your Humble Serv 1 . 

Oliver Goldsmith. 

P.S. I shall expect impatiently the result of your resolutions. 

Now, this Ralph Griffiths the bookseller, whom the diploma of 
some American university as obscure as himself made subsequently 
Doctor Griffiths, was one of the most thriving men of the day. 
In little more than three years after this he was able to retire 
from bookselling, and hand over to Becket the publication of his 
Review. As time wore on, he became a more and more regular 
attendant at the meeting-house, rose higher and higher in the 
world's esteem, and at last kept his two carriages, and " lived in 
"style." But he lived, too, to see the changes of thirty years 
after the grave had received the author of the Vicar of Wakefield ; 
and though he had some recollections of the errors of his youth 
to disturb his decorous and religious peace of mind, — such as 
having become the proprietor of an infamous novel, and dictated 
the praise of it in his Review, — such as having exposed himself to 
a remark reiterated in Grainger's letters to Bishop Percy, that he 
was not to be trusted in any verbal agreement upon matters of his 
trade, — it may not have been the least bitter of his remembrances, 
if it ever happened to occur to him, that to Oliver Goldsmith, 
in the depths of a helpless distress, he had applied the epithets 
of sharper and villain. 

From Goldsmith himself they fell harmless. His letter is most 
affecting : but the truth is manfully outspoken in it, and for that 
reason it is less painful to me than those in which the truth is 
concealed. When such a mind is brought to look its sorrow in 



3 04 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 

the face, and understand clearly the condition in which it is, — 
without further shrinking, doubling, or weak compromise with 
false hopes, — it is master of a great gain. In the accession of 
strength it receives, it may see the sorrow anyway increase, and 
calm its worst apprehension. The most touching passage of that 
letter is the reference to his project, and the bright side of his 
mind it may reveal. I will date from it the true beginning of 
Goldsmith's literary career. Not till he was past thirty, he was 
wont to say, did he become really attached to literature : not 
till then was the discipline of his endurance complete, his 
wandering impulses settled firmly to the right object of their 
aptitude, or his real destiny revealed to him. He might have 
still to perish in unconquered difficulties, and with the word that 
was in him unspoken ; but it would be at his post, and in a 
manly effort to speak the word. Whatever the personal weaknesses 
that yet remain, — nor are they few or trifling, — his confidence 
and self-reliance in literary pursuits date from this memorable 
time. They rise above the cares and cankers of his life, above the 
lowness of his worldly esteem, far above the squalor of his homes. 
They take the undying forms which accident or wrong cannot 
alter or deface : they are the tenants of a world where distress and 
failure are unknown ; and perpetual cheerfulness sings around 
them. " The night can never endure so long but at length the 
"morning cometh ; " and with these sudden and sharp disappoint- 
ments of his second London Christmas, there came into Green 
Arbour-court the first struggling beams of morning. Till all its 
brightness follows, let him moan and sorrow as he may ; — the 
more familiar to himself he makes those images of want and 
danger, the better he will meet them in the lists where they still 
await him ; the more he cultivates those solitary friendships with 
the dead, the more elevating and strengthening the influence that 
will reward him from their graves. The living, busy, prosperous 
world about him, might indeed have saved him much, by stretching 
forth its helping hand : but it had not taught him little in its 
lesson of unrequited expectation, and there was nothing now to 
distract him with delusive hope from meditation of the wisest form 
of revenge. 

The "impatient expectation" of the result of Griffiths's resolu- 
tions, ended in a contract to write him a Life of Voltaire for a 
translation of the Henriade he was about to publish : the payment 
being, twenty^ pounds, and the price of the clothes to be deducted 
from that sum. His brother Henry wrote to him of the Polite 
Learning scheme, while engaged on this trade task ; and the answer 
he made at its close, written early in February 1759, is in some 
sort the indication of his altered mind and purpose. There is still 



chap, v.] DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 105 

evidence of his personal weakness in the idle distrusts and suspicion 
it charges on himself, and in its false pretences to conceal his 
rejection and sustain his poor Irish credit : yet the general tone of 
it marks not the less, a new, a sincerer, and a more active epoch in 
his life. Whilst the quarrel with Griffiths was still proceeding, he 
had again written of the Polite Learning essay, and sent some scheme 
of a new poem to Henry (first fruit of the better uses of his 
adversity) ; but absolute silence as to the Coromandel appointment 
appears to have suggested a doubt in his brother's answer, to which 
very cursory and slight allusion is made in this reply. The 
personal portrait, in which the " big wig" of his Bankside days 
plays its -part, will hardly support his character for personal 
vanity ! 

The behaviour of Mr. Mills and Mr. Lawder is a little extraordinary. 
However, their answering neither yon nor me is a sufficient indication of their 
disliking the employment which I assigned them. As their conduct is different 
from what I had expected, so I have made an alteration in mine. I shall the 
beginning of next month send over two hundred and fifty books, which are all 
that I fancy can be well sold among you, and I would have you make some 
distinction in the persons who have subscribed. The money, which will amount 
to sixty pounds, may be left with Mr. Bradley, as soon as possible. I am not 
certain but I shall quickly have occasion for it. I have met with no dis- 
appointment with respect to my East India voyage ; nor are my resolutions 
altered ; though, at the same time, I must confess it gives me some pain to 
think I am almost beginning the world at the age of thirty-one. Though I never 
had a day's sickness since I saw you, yet I am not that strong and active man you 
once knew me. Tou scarcely can conceive how much eight years of disappoint- 
ment, anguish, and study, have worn me down. If I remember right, you are 
seven or eight years older than me, yet I dare venture to say, that if a stranger 
saw us both, he would pay me the honours of seniority. Imagine to yourself 
a pale melancholy visage, with two great wrinkles between the eye-brows, with 
an eye disgustingly severe, and a big wig ; and you may have a perfect picture 
of my present appearance. On the other hand, I conceive you as perfectly 
sleek and healthy, passing many a happy day among your own children, or 
those who knew you a child. Since I knew what it was to be a man, this is a 
pleasure I have not known. I have passed my days among a parcel of cool 
designing beings, and have contracted all their suspicious manner in my own 
behaviour. I should actually be as unfit for the society of my friends at home, 
as I detest that which I am obliged to partake of here. I can now neither 
partake of the pleasure of a revel, nor contribute to raise its jollity. I can 
neither laugh nor drink, have contracted a hesitating disagreeable manner of 
speaking, and a visage that looks ill-nature itself ; in short, I have thought 
myself into a settled melancholy, and an utter disgust of all that life brings 
with it — Whence this romantic turn, that all our family are possessed with ? 
Whence this love for every place and every country but that in which we reside ? 
for every occupation but our own ? this desire of fortune, and yet this 
eagerness to dissipate ? I perceive, my dear sir, that I am at intervals for 
indulging this splenetic manner, and following my own taste, regardless of 
yours. 

The reasons you have given me for breeding up your son as a scholar, are 
judicious and convincing. I should however be glad to know for what parti- 
cular profession he is designed. If he be assiduous, and divested of strong 

f3 



106 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 

passions (for passions in youth always lead to pleasure), he may do very well 
in your college ; for it must be owned, that the industrious poor have good 
encouragement there, perhaps better than in any other in Europe. But if he 
has ambition, strong passions, and an exquisite sensibility of contempt, do not 
send him there, unless you have no other trade for him except your own. It 
is impossible to conceive how much may be done by a proper education at home. 
A boy, for instance, who understands perfectly well Latin, French, Arithmetic, 
and the principles of the civil law, and can write a fine hand, has an education 
that may qualify him for any undertaking. And these parts of learning 
should be carefully inculcated, let him be designed for whatever calling he will. 
Above all things let him never touch a romance or novel ; those paint beauty 
in colours more charming than nature, and describe happiness that man never 
tastes. How delusive, how destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss. 
They teach the youthful mind to sigh after beauty and happiness which never 
existed; to despise the little good which fortune has mixed in- our cup, by 
expecting more than she ever gave ; and in general, take the word of a man 
who has seen the world, and has studied human nature more by experience 
than precept, take my word for it, I say, that books teach us very little of the 
world. The greatest merit in a state of poverty would only serve to make the 
possessor ridiculous ; may distress, but cannot relieve him. Frugality, and 
even avarice, in the lower orders of mankind, are true ambition. These afford 
the only ladder for the poor to rise to preferment. Teach then, my dear sir, 
to your son thrift and economy. Let his poor wandering uncle's example be 
placed before his eyes. I had learned from books to be disinterested and 
generous, before I was taught from experience the necessity of being prudent. 
I had contracted the habits and notions of a philosopher, while I was exposing 
myself to the insidious approaches of cunning ; and often by being, even with 
my narrow finances, charitable to excess, I forgot the rules of justice, and 
placed myself in the very situation of the wretch who thanked me for my 
bounty. When I am in the remotest part of the world, tell him this, and 
perhaps he may improve from my example. But I find myself again falling 
into my gloomy habits of thinking. 

My mother, I am informed, is almost blind ; even though I had the utmost 
inclination to return home, under such circumstances I could not : for to be- 
hold her in distress without a capacity of relieving her from it, would add too 
much to my splenetic habit. Your last letter was much too short, it should 
have answered some queries I had made in my former. Just sit down as I do, 
and write forward until you have filled all your paper ; it requires no thought, 
at least from the ease with which my own sentiments rise when they are 
addressed to you. For, believe me, my head has no share in all I write ; my 
heart dictates the whole. Pray, give my love to Bob Bryanton, and intreat 
him, from me, not to drink. My dear sir, give me some account about poor 
Jenny [his younger sister, who had married unprosperously]. Yet her husband 
loves her ; if so, she cannot be unhappy. 

I know not whether I should tell you — yet why should I conceal those 
trifles, or indeed anything from you ? — There is a book of mine will be pub- 
lished in a few days, the life of a very extraordinary man ; no less than the 
great Voltaire. You know already by the title, that it is no more than a catch- 
penny. However I spent but four weeks on the whole performance, for which 
I received twenty pounds. When published, I shall take some method of con- 
veying it to you, unless you may think it dear of the postage, which may 
amount to four or five shillings. However, I fear you will not find an equiva- 
lence of amusement. Your last letter, I repeat it, was too short : you should 
have given me your opinion of the design of the heroicomical poem which I 
sent you : you remember I intended to introduce the hero of the poem, as 
lying in a paltry alehouse. You may take the following specimen of the 



ohap. v.] DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. 107 

manner, which I flatter myself is quite original. The room in which he lies, 
may be described somewhat this way : — 

The window, patch' d with paper, lent a ray, 
That feebly shew'd the state in which he lay. 
The sandy floor, that grits beneath the tread : 
The humid wall -with paltry pictures spread ; 
The game of goose was there expos'd to view, 
And the twelve rules the royal martyr drew ; 
The seasons fram'd with listing, found a place, 
And Prussia's monarch shew'd his lamp-black face. 
The morn was cold ; he views with keen desire, 
A rusty grate unconscious of a fire. 
An unpaid reck'ning on the freeze was scor'd, 
And five crack' d teacups dress' d the chimney board. 

And now imagine, after his soliloquy, the landlord to make his appearance, 
in order to dun him for the reckoning : 

Not with that face, so servile and so gay, 
That welcomes every stranger that can pay, 
With sulky eye he smoak'd the patient man, 
Then pull'd his breeches tight, and thus began, &c. 

All this is taken, you see, from nature. It is a good remark of Montaigne's, 
that the wisest men often have friends, with whom they do not care how much 
they play the fool. Take my present follies as instances of regard. Poetry is 
a much easier, and more agreeable species of composition than prose, and could 
a man live by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet. I am re- 
solved to leave no space, though I should fill it up only by telling you, what 
you very well know already, I mean that I am your most affectionate friend 
and brother, Oliver Goldsmith. 



There is a practical condition of mind in this letter, notwith- 
standing its self-reproachful pictures, and protestations of sorrowful 
disgust. It is very clear, were it only by the alehouse hero's example, 
that not all the miseries which surround him will again daunt his 
perseverance, or tempt him to begin life anew. If the bowl is now 
to be broken, it will be broken at the fountain. Could a man live 
by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet : but as he 
has made up his mind to live, and on the world's beggarly terms, 
he will take what practicable work he can get, and be content with 
its fare till pleasant employment comes. When the man in black 
describes the change of good humour with which he went to his 
precarious meals ; how he forbore rants of spleen at his situation, 
ceased to call down heaven and the stars to behold him dining on 
a half-pennyworth of radishes, taught his very companions to believe 
that he liked salad better than mutton, laughed when he was not 
in pain, took the world as it went, and read his Tacitus for want 
of more books and company ; it figures some such change as this 
which I notice here. Whatever the work may be, the resolution 



108 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 

to stick to nature is a good and hopeful one, and mil admit of wise 
application, and many original results. 

The poem seems to have gone no further : but its cheerful hero 
reappeared, after some months, in a " club of authors ; " protested 
that the alehouse had been his own bed-chamber often ; reintroduced 
the description with six new lines ; 

Where the Red Lion flaring o'er the way, 

Invites each passing stranger that can pay ; 

Where Calvert's butt, and Parson's black champagne, 

Regales the drabs and bloods of Drury Lane : 

There, in a lonely room, from bailiffs snug, 

The mnse found Scroggen stretch' d beneath a rug . . 

nattered himself that his work should not be of the order of your 
common epic poems, which come from the press like paper kites in 
the summer ; swore that people were sick of your Turnuses and 
Didos, and wanted an heroical description of nature ; offered, for 
proof of sound, and sense, and truth, and nature, in the trifling 
compass of ten syllables, the last of two added lines ; 

A night- cap deck'd his brows instead of bay, 
A cap by night, a stocking all the day 1 

and having quoted them, was so much elated and self-delighted, 
that he was quite unable to proceed. 

Thus could Goldsmith already turn aside the sharpest edge of 
poverty; thus wisely consent to be Scroggen till he could be 
Goldsmith ; in the paltry, slovenly pothouse of Drury-lane, give 
promise of the neat village alehouse of Auburn ; and betake him- 
self meanwhile to less agreeable daily duties, in a spirit that would 
make them, also, the not indifferent source of profit and delight. 



CHAPTER VI. 



WORK AND HOPE. 1759. 

" Speedily will be published," said the Public Advertiser of the 
7th of February, 1759, " Memoirs of the Life of Monsieur 
■nt 31 " ^ e Voltaire, with critical observations on the writings of 
" that celebrated poet, and a new Translation of the 
" Henriade. Printed for R. Griffiths, in Patemoster-row." 
Nevertheless, the publication did not take place. The Translation 
was by an old fellow- student of Dublin, Edward Purdon ; the poor 






chap, vi.] WORK AND HOPE. 109 

uncertain hack, whose notoriety rests on Goldsmith's epigram, as 
his hunger was, even at this early date, supposed to be mainly 
appeased by a morsel of Goldsmith's crust : and his share of the 
work was probably not completed in time. Some months later, it 
appeared in a magazine, and the Life was given to the public 
through the same bookselling channel ; but it is clear that Gold- 
smith, when he wrote to his brother, had really performed his 
portion of the contract. It was but a catchpenny matter, as he 
called it ; yet including passages of just remark, and gracefully 
written. It announces that early admiration of the genius of 
Voltaire and Rousseau, which he consistently maintained against 
some celebrated friends of his later life : it contains an in- 
teresting notice of Voltaire's residence in England : and for proof 
of the time at which it was written, passages might be given in 
exact paraphrase of the argument of his Polite Learning ; such 
sayings from the last-quoted letter to his brother, as " frugality 
" in the lower orders of mankind may be considered as a sub- 
stitute for ambition ; " and such apophthegms from his recent 
sharp experience, as " the school of misery is the school of 
" wisdom.' 1 

The Polite Learning was now completed, and passing through 
the press : the Dodsleys of Pall Mall, who gave Johnson ten 
guineas for the poem of London, having taken it under their 
charge. This too was the time when, being accidentally in 
company with Grainger at the Temple -exchange Coffee-house, he 
was introduced to Thomas Percy, already busily engaged in col- 
lecting the famous Beliques ; now chaplain to Lord Sussex, and 
who became afterwards Bishop of Dromore. Percy, who had a 
great love of letters and of literary men, was attracted to this new 
acquaintance ; for, before he returned to his vicarage of Easton 
Mauduit in Northamptonshire, he discovered Goldsmith's address 
in Green Arbour-court, and resolved to call upon him. "A 
" friend of his paying him a visit " (I quote from the Memoir to 
which the grave church dignitary, and descendant of the ancient 
Earls of Northumberland, communicated this and other anecdotes) 
"at the beginning of March 1759, found him in lodgings there so 
' ' poor and uncomfortable, that he should not think it proper to 
" mention the circumstance, if he did not consider it as the highest 
' ' proof of the splendour of Doctor Goldsmith's genius and talents, 
* ' that by the bare exertion of their powers, under every disadvan- 
' ' tage of person and fortune, he could gradually emerge from such 
" obscurity to the enjoyment of all the comforts and even luxuries 
" of life, and admission into the best societies of London. The 
■ ' Doctor was writing his Enquiry <£c. in a wretched dirty room, in 
"which there was but one chair, and when he, from civility, 



110 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AXD TIMES. 



[book II. 



" offered it to his visitant, himself was obliged to sit in the window. 
• • While they were conversing, some one gently rapped at the door, 
' ' and being desired to come in, a poor ragged little girl of very 




1 ' decent behaviour, entered, who, dropping a curtsie, said, ' My 
c ' ' mama sends her compliments, and begs the favour of you to 
1 ' ' lend her a chamber-pot full of coals. ' " 

If the February number of the Critical Bevieiv lay near the 
reverend, startled,, and long-descended visitor, perhaps good- 
natured Goldsmith, as he scraped together his answer to that 
humble petition, proffered with a respectful deference which yet 
showed in what respect his poor neighbours held him, pointed with 
a smile to a description of the fate of poets which he had just pub- 
lished there. " There is a strong similitude," he had said, re- 
viewing a new edition of the Fairy Queen, "between the lives of 
"almost all our English poets. The Ordinary of Newgate, we are 
' 1 told, has but one story, which serves for the life of every hero 
" that happens to come within the circle of his pastoral care ; how- 
"ever unworthy the resemblance appears, it may be asserted that 
* ' the history of one poet might serve with as little variation for 
' ' that of any other. — Born of creditable parents, who gave him a 
"pious education. However, in spite of all their endeavours, in 
"spite of all the exhortations of the minister of the parish on 
"Sundays, he turned his mind from following good things, and 
' ' fell to writing verses ! Spenser, in short, lived poor, was 



ohap. vi.] WORK AND HOPE. Ill 

" reviled by the critics of his time, and died at last in the utmost 
" distress." 

He was again working for Hamilton. Smollett himself had not 
seen his new reviewer, but, the success of the Ovid papers having 
proclaimed the value of such assistance, he appears to have sent 
the publisher with renewed offers to Green Arbour-court. Gold- 
smith had resumed with this notice of Spenser ; a discriminating 
proof of his appreciation of all true mastery in the divine art. 
Popular and practical himself, he wonders not the less at the 
"great magician:" suddenly taken "from the ways of the 
" present world," and far from Drury-lane alehouses or Auburn 
villages, in the sequestered remoteness of that gorgeous and luxu- 
rious fancy he thinks of Virgil, and even Homer, as moderns in 
comparison with Elizabeth's Englishman : and when he awakes 
from this Elysium, and comes back to the ways of the world, his 
conclusions are, that "no poet enlarges the imagination more than 
"Spenser;" that "Cowley was formed into poetry by reading 
" him ; " that " Gray and Akenside have profited by their study of 
" him ; V and that "his verses may one day come to be considered 
"the standard of English poetry." His next article, which 
appeared in the following number, was a notice of young Lang- 
horne's translation of Bion's Elegy of Adonis ; wherein he happily 
contrasted the false and florid tastes of the day with the pure 
simplicity of the Greeks. And subsequently, with as clear and 
shrewd a spirit, he discussed a book on Oratory by a Gresham pro- 
fessor of rhetoric ; instancing the lawyer who, on " hearing his 
" adversary talk of the war of Troy, the beauteous Helena, and 
" the river Scamander, intreated the court to observe that his client 
"was christened, not Scamander, but Simon." 

And here I will sum up, briefly as I may, what remain to be 
noticed of these humble and unacknowledged labours in the Critical 
Review. The tone is more confident than in the days when he 
wrote under the sign of The Dunciad ; but the fair appreciation is 
the same. Obscure and depressed as the writer was, his free 
running hand very frankly betrays its work, amid the cramped 
laborious penmanship with which Smollett's big-wigged friends 
surrounded it. JS~o man ever put so much of himself into his 
books as Goldsmith, from the very beginning to the end of his 
career ; and no man wishing to hide under cover of a mean fortune, 
was ever so easily detected. Favourite expressions, which to the 
end of his life continued so, are here ; thoughts he had turned to 
happy use in his Irish letters, reappear again and again ; and dis- 
guise himself for Scroggen or James Willington as he may, he 
cannot write from other inspiration, or with a less natural 
instinctive grace, than his own. The work I now refer to con- 



112 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 

nects itself, for this reason, with the most brilliant to follow. The 
foibles and social vanities which his Chinese friend is soon with 
indulgent humour to correct, are here already clear to him ; the 
false poetic taste which he will shortly supplant with his natural 
manly verse, he does his best thus early to weaken and expose ; 
and the do-me-good family romances, with which the moral- 
mongers of the day would make stand against the Roderick 
Randoms and Tom Joneses, are thrust back from before the View's 
way. 

Among his reviews, then, was one of Murphy's Orphan of 
China ; containing not only better critical remarks than were usual 
with him both on Shakespeare and Voltaire, but good-natured 
evidence of curiosity as to the Chinese people, and of interest in 
the plans of his recent reverend visitor (Mr. *Percy), at that time 
preparing a Chinese translation for the press. Butler's Remains 
furnished him another subject ; in which, bewailing the "indi- 
"gence in which the poet lived and died," he protested with 
generous " horror at the want of discernment, at the more 
"than barbarous ingratitude, of his contemporaries." A third 
was Marriott's Answer to the Critical Review ; containing whim- 
sical and humorous apology for his own satirical comparisons of 
three months before. And he found a fourth in Dunkins's Epistle 
to Lord Chesterfield ; which he closed with humorous application 
of a Spanish story to exposure of the toadyism prevailing in 
small literary coteries. Noticeable also, in recapitulation of this 
drudgery, are papers on President Gouget's Origin of Laws, Arts, 
and Sciences, and on Formey's Philosophical Miscellanies, written 
with lively understanding of the characters of French and German 
intellect ; — on Van Egmont's Travels in Asia, wherein a scheme of 
later life was shadowed forth ; " could we see a man set out upon 
" a journey, not with an intent to discover rocks and rivers, but 
' ' the manners, the mechanic inventions, and the imperfect learning 
"of the inhabitants ; resolved to penetrate into countries as yet 
" little known, and eager to pry into all their secrets, with a heart 
" not terrified at trifling dangers ; if there could be found a man 
' ' who could thus unite true courage with sound learning, from 
"such a character we might expect much information;" — on 
Guicciardini's History of Italy, showing some knowledge of Italian 
literature ; — on Montesquieu's Miscellaneous Pieces, justifying, by 
many expressions of intelligent interest in the minor and unac- 
knowledged works of a man of genius, such rapid indication as I 
now give of his own earlier and less known performances ; — and 
finally, for my summary must be brief, on parson Hawkins's Works, 
and on the same irritable parson's Impartial Reader's Answer to 
the said review of his works ; where Goldsmith thus drily, in the 



chap, vi.] WORK AND HOPE. 113 

second of these articles, put the difference between himself and 
the reverend writer. "He is for putting his own works upon the 
' ' same shelf with Milton and Shakespeare, and we are for allowing 
" him an inferior situation ; he would have the same reader that 
" commends Addison's delicacy to talk with raptures of the purity 
" of Hawkins ; and he who praises the Bape of the Lock to speak 
" with equal feelings of that richest of all poems, Mr. Hawkins's 
" Thimble,. But we, alas ! cannot speak of Mr. H. with the same 
" unrestrained share of panegyric that he does of himself. Perhaps 
" our motive to malevolence might have been that Mr. Hawkins 
" stood between us and a good living ? We can solemnly assure 
u him we are quite contented with our present situation in the 
" church, are quite happy in a wife and forty pounds a year, nor 
" have the least ambition for pluralities." 

Nor should I close this rapid account of Goldsmith's labours in 
the Critical Beview, without referring at least to the unsparing 
yet not ill-natured satire with which he laughed at a form of fiction 
which was then beginning to be popular ; a foreshadowing of the 
insipidities of the Minerva press ; a kind of fashionable family 
novel, with which the stately mother, and the boarding-school 
miss, were instructed to fortify themselves against the immoralities 
of Smollett and of Fielding. As with Jonathan Wild in the 
matter of Cacus, Goldsmith "knew a better way ;" and in his 
witty exposure of Jemima and Louisa, showed himself prepared 
to make it known. 

That was his last contribution either to Smollett or to Mr. 
Griffiths. With it Goldsmith's adieu to both Reviews was said, 
and he left them to fight out their quarrels with each other. 
Mr. Griffiths might accuse Smollett of selling his praise for a fat buck, 
aDd Smollett might retort upon Mrs. Griffiths that an antiquated 
Sappho sat ill in the chair of Aristarchus ; but this interchange of 
abuse will in future cease to have a bitterness personal to his own 
fortunes. We are gradually now to follow him, and them, to " a 
" more removed ground." Yet not until the scene of life shall 
entirely close will it be permitted him to forget that he once toiled 
in humiliating bondage at the sign of The Dunciad in Paternoster- 
row, and was paid retainer and servant to ' ' those significant 
" emblems, the owl and the long-ear'd animal, which," according 
to Smollett, " Mr. Griffiths so sagely displays for the mirth and 
' ' information of mankind. " 



114 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 

CHAPTEK VII. 

AN APPEAL FOR AUTHORS BY PROFESSION. 1759. 

Meanwhile the Dodsleys had issued their advertisements, and 
the London Chronicle of the 3rd of April, 1759, announced 
Mt 31 ^ e a PP earance > the day before, of An Enquiry into the 
Present State of Polite Learning in Europe. It was a 
very respectable, well-printed duodecimo ; was without the author's 
name on the title-page, though Goldsmith was anxious to have the 
authorship widely known ; and had two learned mottoes. The 
Greek signified that the writer esteemed philosophers, but was no 
friend to sophists ; and the Latin, that those only should destroy 
buildings who could themselves build. 

The first idea of the work has been seen ; as it grew consolingly, 
like the plant in the Picciola, from between the hard and stony 
environments of a desperate fortune. Some modifications it re- 
ceived, as the prospects of the writer were subjected to change ; 
and its title held out much too large a promise for the limited 
materials, both of reading and experience, brought to its com- 
position. But it was in advance of any similar effort in that 
day. No one was prepared, in a treatise so grave, for a style so 
enchantingly graceful. To combine liveliness with learning, is 
thought something of a heresy still. 

With any detailed account of this well-known Enquiry I do not 
propose to detain the reader ; but for illustration of the course I 
have taken in this memoir, some striking passages should not be 
overlooked, and others will throw light forward on new scenes that 
await us. The contents of the treatise too, as found in the current 
collections, are wanting in much that gives interest to the duo- 
decimo now lying before me, the first of the Dodsley editions. For 
it is not, in these days at any rate, with any remarkable concern 
for the state of polite learning in Europe we now turn to its pages. 
We may feel its title to be undoubtedly so far a misnomer that to 
substitute Mr. Griffiths's Shop for Europe would perhaps more 
correctly describe the polite learning it enquires into ; but it is 
this very fact, and the personal interest derived from it, which 
constitutes now for us its principal and great attraction. 

Manifest throughout the book is one over-ruling feeling, under 
various forms ; the conviction that, in bad critics and sordid book- 
sellers, learning has to contend with her worst enemies. When he 



chap, vii.] APPEAL FOR AUTHORS BY PROFESSION. 115 

has described at tlie outset the wise reverence for letters which 
prevailed in the old Greek time, when "learning was encouraged, 
r protected, honoured, and in its turn adorned, strengthened, and 
" harmonised the community," he turns to the sophists and critics 
for the day of its decline. In this way he distinguishes three 
periods in the history of ancient learning : its commencement, or 
the age of poets ; its maturity, or the age of philosophers ; and 
its decline, or the age of critics. Corruptissvma respublica plurimcc 
leges. In like manner, when he turns to the consideration of the 
decay of modern letters, critics are again brought up for judg- 
ment as the principal offenders ; and as he too manifestly thinks of 
the starving scribblers whom Mr. Griffiths had at hand to do his 
bidding, it is with a melancholy consciousness that he must him- 
self stand at the same bar. " This decay which criticism produces 
" may be deplored, but can scarcely be remedied, as the man who 
j r writes against the critics is obliged to add himself to the 
j "number." Nevertheless, it was with manly self-assertion of 
attainments which raised him above the herd, that he afterwards 
scornfully disclaimed that viler brotherhood. " I fire with indig- 
" nation when I see persons wholly destitute of education and 
"genius indent to the press, and thus turn book-makers, adding 
| "to the sin of criticism the sin of ignorance also; whose trade is a 
i " bad one, and who are bad workmen in the trade." So much 
was not to be said of his workmanship, by even the deity of the 
Dunciad — the contriver of books to be made, the master-employer 
in the miserable craft, Griffiths himself. 

And thus comes upon the scene that other arch-foe, to whom, 
in modern days, the literary craftsman is but minister and servant. 
! The critic or sophist might have been contriver of all harms, while 
, the field of mischief was his own, and limited to a lecture-room of 
Athens or Alexandria ; but he bowed to a more potent spirit of 
evil when the mau of Paternoster-row or the Poultry came up in 
' later days, took literature into charitable charge, and assumed 
exclusive direction of laws of taste and men of learning. Drawing 
on a hard experience, Goldsmith depicted the "precarious sub- 
sistence " and daily fate of the bookseller's workman : " coming 
down at stated intervals to rummage the bookseller's counter for 
materials to work upon : " a fate which other neglects now 
made inevitable. " The author," Goldsmith had previously said, 
' when unpatronised' by the great, has naturally recourse to the 
' bookseller. There cannot perhaps be imagined a combination 
» more prejudicial to taste than this. It is the interest of the one 
' to allow as little for writing, and of the other to write as much, 
'as possible ; accordingly tedious compilations and periodical 
' magazines are the result of their joint endeavours. In these 



]16 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 

" circumstances the author bids adieu to fame, and writes for 
" bread . . . his reputation never spreads in a wider circle than that 
" of the trade, who generally value him, not for the fineness of 
"his compositions, but the quantity he works off in a given time. 
" A long habit of writing for bread thus turns the ambition of 
" every author at last into avarice. He finds that he has written 
' ' many years, that the public are scarcely acquainted even with his 
" name ; he despairs of applause, and turns to profit which invites 
" him. He finds that money procures all those advantages, that 
" respect, and that ease which he vainly expected from fame. Thus 
" the man who under the protection of the great might have done 
"honour to humanity, when only patronised by the bookseller 
4 ' becomes a thing little superior to the fellow who works at the 
"press." In connection with this unpromising picture, in his 
following chapter, he placed " the two literary reviews in London, 
" with critical newspapers and magazines without number ; " 
remarking in another place that, "were these Monthly Reviews 
" and Magazines frothy, pert, or absurd, they might find some 
" pardon ; but to be dull and dronish is an encroachment on the 
" prerogative of a folio." For one example of the evil he instanced 
the power of a single monosyllable in these productions, to express 
the victory over humour amongst us, from which no one in later 
years was to suffer as much as himself. " Does the poet 
"paint the absurdities of the vulgar, then he is low : does he ex- 
" aggerate the features of folly to render it more thoroughly 
"ridiculous, he is then very loiv." And he laughingly suggested 
(this joke, I may interpose, he confined to his first edition) that 
check might possibly be given to it by some such law ' ' enacted in 
"the republic of letters as we find takes effect in the House of 
" Commons. As no man there can show his wisdom, unless 
" qualified by three hundred pounds a-year, so none here should 
" possess gravity, unless his work amounted to three hundred 
"pages." In other parts of the treatise he guards himself from 
being supposed to wish that a mere money -service, a system of 
flattery and beggary, should replace that of the booksellers. He 
would object, he says, to indigence and effrontery subjecting 
learning itself to the contempts incurred by its professors ; but he 
would no more have an author draw a quill merely to take a purse, 
than present a pistol for the same purpose. 

These passages in the Enquiry were startling, and not to be 
protected from notice by even the obscurity of the writer. They 
struck at the seat of a monstrous evil. " We must observe," said 
Smollett, noticing the book in the Critical Review, "that, against 
' ' his own conviction, this author has indiscriminately censured the 
' ' two Reviews ; confounding a work undertaken from public 



chap, vii.] APPEAL FOE AUTHORS BY PROFESSION. 11 1 

' ' spirit, with one supported for the sordid purposes of a bookseller, 
" — It might not become us to say more on this subject." The 
sordid bookseller was not so delicate, and did say much more ; 
calling in for the purpose the pen of Kenrick, a notorious and 
convicted libeller; "It requires a good deal of art and temper," 
said the Monthly Review, after objections to the whole treatise, 
some just enough, on the score of its want of learning and too 
hasty decision on national literatures, others, connected with the 
subject of patronage, shallow as they were severe, " for a man to 
i ' write consistently against the dictates of his own heart. Thus, 
" notwithstanding our author talks so familiarly of us, the great, 
" and affects to be thought to stand in the rank of Patrons, we 
"cannot help thinking that in more places than one he has 
" betrayed, in himself, the man he so severely condemns for draw- 
" ing his quill to take a purse. We are even so firmly convinced 
" of this, that we dare put the question home to his conscience, 
"whether he never experienced the unhappy situation he so feel- 
" ingly describes in that of a Literary Understrapper 1 His 
" remarking him as coming down from his garret, to rummage the 
" bookseller's shop, for materials to work upon, and the knowledge 
"he displays of his minutest labours, give great reason to suspect" 
(generous and forbearing Griffiths !) "he may himself have had 
" concerns in the bad trade of bookmaking. Fronti nulla fides. 
" We have heard of many a Writer, who, ' patronised only by his 
" ' bookseller,' has nevertheless affected the Gentleman in print, 
"and talked full as cavalierly as our Author himself. We have 
" even known one hardy enough publicly to stigmatise men of the 
"first rank in literature, for their immoralities, while conscious 
" himself of labouring under the infamy of having, by the vilest 
"and meanest actions, forfeited all pretensions to honour and 
" honesty. . If such men as these, boasting a liberal education, 
"and pretending to genius, practise at the same time those arts 
" which bring the Sharper " (the reader will remember this word 
in the affecting letter of remonstrance against Griffiths) "to the 
U cart's- tail or the pillory, need our Author wonder that 'learning 
" ' partakes the contempt of its professors.' If characters of this 
' ' stamp are to be found among the learned, need any one be 
" surprised that the great prefer the society of Fiddlers, Gamesters, 
" and Buffoons ? " 

The time will come when Mr. Griffiths, with accompaniment 
such as that of his ancient countryman's friend when the leek was 
offered, will publicly withdraw these vulgar falsehoods ; and 
meanwhile they are not deserving of remark. Indeed the quarrel, 
or interchange of foul reproach, as between author and bookseller, 
may claim at all times the least possible part of attention. It is a 



118 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 

third more serious influence to which appeal is made, and on whose 
right interference the righteous arrangement must at last depend. 
But at the close of the second epoch, so brief yet so sorrowful, in 
the life of this great and genuine man of letters, it becomes us at 
least to understand the appeal he would have entered against the 
existing controul and government of the destinies of literature. It 
was manifestly premature, and some passages of his after-life will 
plainly avow as much : but it had too sharp an experience in it 
not to have also much truth, and it would better have become 
certain bystanders in that age to have gone in and parted the 
combatants, than, as they did, make a ring around them for 
enjoyment of the sport, or in philosophic weariness abandon the 
scene altogether. 

" You know," said Horace Walpole to one of his correspondents, 
"how I shun authors, and would never have been one myself, if it 
"obliged me to keep such bad company. They are always in 
" earnest, and think their profession serious, and dwell upon trifles, 
" and reverence learning. I laugh at all these things, and divert 
"myself." "It is probable," said David Hume, " that Paris will 
' ' be long my home . . I have even thoughts of settling in Paris 
" for the rest of my life . . I have a reluctance to think of living 
" among the factious barbarians of London. Letters are there 
"held in no honour. The taste for literature is neither decayed 
* ' nor depraved here, as with the barbarians who inhabit the banks 
"of the Thames . . . Learning and the learned are on a very 
"different footing here, from what they are among the factious 
"barbarians." 

Matter of diversion for one, of disgust and avoidance for others, 
the factious barbarian struggle was left to a man more single-hearted, 
who thought the business of life a thing to be serious about, and 
who, unlike the Humes and Walpoles, was solely dependent for his 
bread on the very booksellers, of the danger of whose absolute 
power he desired to give timely warning. This he might do, as it 
seems to me, without personal injustice, and without pettish spite 
to the honest craft of bookselling, or to any other respectable trade. 
So far he had a perfect right to use the bitter experience he had 
acquired, and to argue from his particular case to the general 
question before him. He might believe that those trade-indentures 
would turn out ill for literature ; that in enlarging its channels by 
vulgar means, might be mischief rather than good ; that facilities 
for appeal to a wide circle of uninformed readers, were but facilities 
for employment to a circle of writers nearly as wide and quite as 
UDinformed ; that, in raising up a brood of writers whom any 
other earthly employment would have better fitted, lay the danger 
of bringing down the man of genius to their level ; and, in short, 



chap, vii.] APPEAL FOR AUTHORS BY PROFESSION. 119 

that literature, properly understood and rightly cherished, had 
altogether a higher duty and significance than the profit or the loss 
of a tradesman's counter. In this I hold him to have taken fair 
ground. The reputations we have lived to see raised on these false 
foundations, the good clerks and accountants whom magazines have 
turned into bad literary men, the readers whose tastes have been 
pandered to and yet further lowered, the writers whose better 
talents have been disregarded and wasted, the venal puffery and 
pretence which have more depressed the modern man of letters 
than ever shameless flattery and beggary reduced his predecessors ; 
are good evidence on that point. 

But when Goldsmith wrote, there was still a certain recognised 
work for the bookseller to do. With the aftercourse of this 
narrative it will more fully appear, even in that entire assent and 
adhesion of Goldsmith himself which he certainly did not contem- 
plate when the Enquiry was planned, yet which, at the close of the 
experience of his life, he would almost seem to have silently with- 
drawn, by leaving the book revised for a posthumous edition with 
its protest against booksellers unabated and unmodified. To 
complete that protest now (a most essential part of this chapter in 
his fortunes), I will add proof, from other parts of the Enquiry, of 
the manly and unselfish bearing of the appeal which was built upon 
it. There will be found no inconsistency between the opening and 
closing lines of the sentences first given, by those who have studied 
the disclosures made recently by men who take the deepest interest 
in the welfare of our universities ; and who contrast them, as they 
now are, with the original purpose for which the grand foundations 
of princely prelates, and nobles in advance of their age, first arose 
in Cambridge and Oxford. 

No nation gives greater encouragement to learning than we do ; yet none are 
so injudicious in the application. We seem to confer them with the same view 
that statesmen have been known to grant employments at Court, rather as 
bribes to silence than incentives to emulation. All our magnificent endow- 
ments of colleges are erroneous ; and at best, more frequently enrich the 
prudent than reward the ingenious. Among the universities abroad I have 
ever observed their riches and their learning in a reciprocal proportion, their 
stupidity and pride increasing with their opulence. . . . What then are the 
proper encouragements of genius ? I answer, subsistence and respect, for these 
are rewards congenial to its nature. 

This is not the language of one who would have had literature 
again subsist, as of old, on servile adulation and vulgar charity. 
Goldsmith indeed seems rather to have thought with an earnest 
man of genius in our own day, that subscriptions and grants of 
money are by no means the chief things wanted for proper 
organisation of the literary class. "To give our men of letters," 



120 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 

says Mr. Carlyle, " stipends, endowments, and all furtherance of 
"cash, will do little toward the business. On the whole, one is 
"weary of hearing about the omnipotence of money. I will say 
" rather, that, for a genuine man, it is no evil to be poor . . Money, 
"in truth, can do much, but it cannot do all. We must know 
' ' the province of it, and confine it there ; and even spurn it back, 
" when it wishes to get farther." One of the lively illustrations of 
the Enquiry is not very unlike this. " The beneficed divine," says 
Goldsmith, " whose wants are only imaginary, expostulates as 
"bitterly as the poorest author that ever snuffed his candle with 
"finger and thumb. Should interest or good fortune advance the 
" divine to a bishopric, or the poor son of Parnassus into that place 
"which the other has resigned, both are authors no longer. The 
" one goes to prayers once a day, kneels upon cushions of velvet, 
" and thanks gracious Heaven for having made the circumstances 
" of all mankind so extremely happy ; the other battens on all the 
"delicacies of life, enjoys his wife and his easy chair, and some- 
" times, for the sake of conversation, deplores the luxury of these 
"degenerate days. All encouragements to merit are therefore 
"misapplied, which make the author too rich to continue his 
"profession." 

But he would not therefore starve him, or to the mercies of 
blind chance altogether surrender him. He recals a time he would 
wish to see revived, when, with little of wealth or worldly luxury, 
the writer could yet command esteem for himself and reverence for 
the claims of his calling (for this, and not the vulgar thought of 
merely feasting with a lord, is what he intends by the allusion to 
Somers) ; and he dwells upon the contrast of existing times, 
in language which will hereafter connect itself with the deliberate 
dislike of Walpole, and the uneasy jealousy of Garrick. 

When the link between patronage and learning was entire, then all who 
deserved fame were in a capacity of attaining it. When the great Somers 
was at the helm, patronage was fashionable among our nobility. The middle 
ranks of mankind, who generally imitate the great, then followed their ex- 
ample, and applauded from fashion if not from feeling. I have heard an old 
poet [he alludes to Young] of that glorious age say, that a dinner with his 
lordship has procured him invitations for the whole week following ; that an 
airing in his patron's chariot has supplied him with a citizen's coach on every 
future occasion. For who would not be proud to entertain a man who kept so 
much good company ? But this link now seems entirely broken. Since the 
days of a certain prime-minister of inglorious memory, the learned have been 
kept pretty much at a distance. A jockey, or a laced player, supplies the 
place of the scholar, poet, or the man of virtue. . . . Perhaps of all mankind 
an author in these times is used most hardly. We keep him poor and yet 
revile his poverty. Like angry parents, who correct their children till they 
cry, and then correct them for crying, we reproach him for living by his wit, 
and yet allow him no other means to live. His taking refuge in garrets and 
cellars has of late been violently objected to him, and that by men who I dare 



chap, vii.] APPEAL FOE AUTHORS BY PROFESSION. J 21 

hope are more apt to pity than insult his distress. Is poverty the writer's 
fault ? No doubt he knows how to prefer a bottle of champaign to the nectar 
of the neighbouring alehouse, or a venison pasty to a plate of potatoes. Want 
of delicacy is not in him but in us, who deny him the opportunity of making 
an elegant choice. Wit certainly is the property of those who have it, nor 
should we be displeased if it is the only property a man sometimes has. We 
must not underrate him who uses it for subsistence, and flies from the ingrati- 
tude of the age even to a bookseller for redress. If the profession of an author 
is to be laughed at by the stupid, it is certainly better to be contemptibly rich 
i than contemptibly poor. For all the wit that ever adorned the human mind 
will at present no more shield the author's poverty from ridicule, than his 
; high-topped gloves conceal the unavoidable omissions of bis laundress. To be 
I more serious, new fashions, follies, and vices, make new monitors necessary in 
J every age. An author may be considered as a merciful substitute to the legis- 
lature ; he acts not by punishing crimes but preventing them ; however 
virtuous the present age, there may be still growing employment for ridicule 
or reproof, for persuasion or satire. If the author be therefore still so neces- 
sary among us, let us treat him with proper consideration as a child of the 
public, not a rent-charge on the community. And indeed a child of the public 
| he is in all respects ; for while so well able to direct others, how incapable is 
he frequently found of guiding himself ! His simplicity exposes him to all the 
insidious approaches of cunning ; his sensibility to the slightest invasions of 
contempt. Though possessed of fortitude to stand unmoved the expected 
bursts of an earthquake, yet of feelings so exquisitely poignant as to agonise 
under the slightest disappointment. Broken rest, tasteless meals, and cause- 
less anxiety, shorten his life, or render it unfit for active employment ; pro- 
longed vigils and intense application still farther contract his span, and make 
his time glide insensibly away. Let us not then aggravate those natural 
inconveniences by neglect ; we have had sufficient instances of this kind 
already. Sale and Moore will .suffice for one age at least. But they are dead, 
and their sorrows are over. The neglected author of the Persian Eclogues 
[Collins], which, however inaccurate, excel any in our language, is still alive. 
Happy, if insensible of our neglect, not raging at our ingratitude. It is 
enough that the age has already produced instances of men pressing foremost 
in the lists of fame, and worthy of better times, schooled by continued adver- 
sity into an hatred of their kind, flying from thought to drunkenness, yielding 
to the united pressure of labour, penury, and sorrow, sinking unheeded, with- 
out one friend to drop a tear on their unattended obsequies, and indebted to 
charity for a grave. 

These words had been written but a very few years, when the 
hand that traced them was itself cold ; and, yielding to that 
united pressure of labour, penury, and sorrow, with a frame ex- 
hausted by unremitting and ill-rewarded drudgery, Goldsmith was 
indebted to the forbearance of creditors for a peaceful burial. It 
is not, then, in the early death of learned Sale, driven mad with 
those fruitless schemes of a society for encouragement of learning, 
which he carried, it may be hoped, to a kinder world than this ; it 
is not from the grave of Edward Moore, with melancholy playful- 
ness anticipating, in his last unsuccessful project, the very day 
on which his death would fall ; it is not even at the shrieks of 
poor distracted Collins, heard through the melancholy cathedral- 
cloister where he had played in childhood : but it is in this life, 

G 



122 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ii. 

adventures, and death of Oliver Goldsmith, that the mournful and 
instructive moral speaks its warning to us now. 

I know of none more deeply impressive, or of wider import and 
significance. When Collins saw the hopes of his youth in the cold 
light of the world's indifference, with a mixed impulse of despair 
and revenge he collected the unsold edition of his hapless Odes and 
Eclogues, and with a savage delight beheld them slowly consume, 
as, in his own room, he made a bonfire of them. When Goldsmith 
was visited with a like weakness, something of a like result fore- 
boded ; but the better part was forced upon him in his own despite, 
and in the present most affecting picture of his patience the hectic 
agony of Collins is but an idle frenzy. Steadily gazing on the evil 
destinies of men of letters, he no longer desires to avoid his own ; 
conscious of the power of the booksellers, he condemns and 
denounces it ; without direct hope, save of some small public favour, 
he protests against cruelties for which the public are responsible. 
The protest will accompany us through the remainder of his life : 
and be remembered as well in its lightest passages, as in those 
where any greatness of suffering will now be less apparent than a 
calmness of endurance ; a resolute quiet power of persevering 
exertion, in which, with whatever infirmities of disposition or 
temper, he will front and foil adversity. 

Such, at the worst, is the resource of a healthy genius. It 
works evil into good, and has within it a principle of sustainment 
and of self-consolation. The* more particularly does it become the 
world to take note of this, as a party far more deeply concerned 
than bookseller or than author. That cry of Goldsmith is little 
for himself. Who wins his passage to the goal, may care little at 
the close for a larger suffering or a less : the cry is raised for ! 
others, meanwhile perishing by the way. When Irene failed, and 
Johnson was asked how he felt, he answered "like the Monu- 
" ment ;" but when he had arrived at comfort and independence, 
and carelessly taking up one day his own fine satire, opened it at 
the lines which paint the scholar's fate, and the obstructions, 
almost insurmountable, in his way to fortune and fame, he burst 
into a passion of tears. Not for what he had himself endured, 
whose labour was at last victoriously closed ; but for all the 
disastrous chances that still awaited others. It is the world's 
concern. There is a subtle spirit of compensation at work, when 
men regard it least, which to the spiritual sense accommodates the 
vilest need, and lightens the weariest burden. Milton talked of 
the lasting fame and perpetuity of praise, which God and good 
men have consented should be the reward of those whose published 
labours have advanced the good of mankind ; and it is a set-off, 
doubtless, in the large account. The ' ' two carriages " and the 



chap, vii.] APPEAL FOE AUTHORS BY PROFESSION. 123 

" style " of Griffiths are long passed away into the rubbish they 
sprang from, and all of us will be apt enough now to thank 
heaven that we were not Griffiths. Jacob Tonson's hundred 
thousand pounds are now of less account than the bad shillings he 
insinuated into Dryden's payments ; and the fame of Secretary 
Nottingham is very much overtopped by the pillory of De Foe. 
The Italian princes who beggared Dante are still without pity 
writhing in his deathless poem, while Europe looks to the beggar 
as to a star in heaven ; nor has Italy's greater day, or the magnifi- 
cence which crowded the court of Augustus, left behind them a 
name of any earthly interest to compare with his who restored 
land to Virgil, and who succoured the fugitive Horace. These 
are results which have obtained in all countries, and been confessed 
by every age ; and it will be well when they win for literature 
other living regards, and higher present consideration, than it has 
yet been able to obtain. Men of genius can more easily starve, 
than the world, with safety to itself, can continue to neglect and 
starve them. What new arrangement, what kind of consideration 
may be required, will not be very distant from the simple acknow- 
ledgment that greater honour and respect are due. 

This is what literature has wanted in England, and not the 
laced coat and powdered wig, the fashionable acceptance and great 
men's feasts, which have on rare occasions been substituted for it. 
The most liberal patronage vouchsafed in this country to living 
I men of letters, has never been unaccompanied by degrading inci- 
l dents ; nor their claims at any time admitted without discourtesy 
or contumely. It is a century and a half since an act of parliament 
was passed to "protect" them, under cover of which their most 
! valuable private rights were confiscated to the public use ; and it 
j is not twenty years since another legislative arrangement was 
made on their behalf, by favour of which the poet and the 
royal writing-master, the historian and the royal dancing-master, 
the philosopher and the royal coachman, Sir Christopher Wren's 
great grand- daughter and the descendant of Charles the Second's 
French riding-master, are permitted to appear in the same 
annual charitable list. But though statesmen have yet to learn 
what the state loses by such unwise scorn of what enlightens 
and refines it, they cannot much longer remain ignorant to what 
extent they are themselves enslaved by the power they thus affect 
to despise, or of the special functions of government and states- 
manship which it is gradually assuming to itself. Its progress has 
been uninterrupted since Johnson's and Goldsmith's time, and 
cannot for as many more years continue unacknowledged. Pitt 
sneered when the case of Burns was stated to him, and talked of 
literature taking care of itself, — which indeed it can do, and in a 

62 



124 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [rook : 

different and larger sense from what the minister intended : but 
whether society can take care of itself, is also a material question. 

Towards its solution, one sentence of Goldsmith's protest is 
an offering from his sorrow in these times of authorship by com- 
pulsion, not less worthy than his more cheerful offerings in those 
days of authorship by choice, to which the reader is now invited. 
"An author may be considered as a merciful substitute to the 
" legislature. He acts not by punishing crimes, but by preventing 
"them." 









BOOK THE THIRD, 



CHAPTEE I. 



WRITING THE BEE. 1759. 

The Booksellers were never more active than at the close of 
1759. If literature had anything to hope from such 
exertions, its halcyon days were come. If it could live ™, oi 
on magazines and reviews ; if strength, subsistence, and 
respect, lay in employment of the multitudinous force of Grub- 
street ; if demand and supply were law sufficient for its higher 
interests ; literature was prosperous at last, and might laugh at all 
Pope's prophecies. Every week had its spawn of periodical 
publications ; feeble, but of desperate fecundity. Babblers, and 

J Schemers ; Friends, and Advisers ; Auditors, Comptrollers, and 
Grumblers ; Spendthrifts, and Bachelors ; Free-Enquirers, Scruta- 
tors, and Investigators ; Englishmen, Freeholders, and Moderators ; 
Sylphs, and Triflers ; Bangers, and Cottagers ; Templars, Gentlemen, 
and Skeptics, — in constant succession rose and fell. "Sons of a 
"day, just buoyant on the flood," next day might see them 
"numbered with the puppies in the mud :" but the parents of the 
dull blind offspring had meanwhile eaten and drank, and the owners 
or masters profited. Of magazines alone, weekly and monthly, I 
will enumerate the specimens which a very few weeks, between the 

! close of 1759 and the beginning of 1760, added to a multitude 
already wearing out their brief existence. They were : the Boyal 
Magazine, or Gentleman's Monthly Companion ; the Impartial 
Beview, or Literary Journal ; the Weekly Magazine, or Gentlemen 
and Ladies' Bolite Companion ; the Ladies' Magazine ; the Bublic 
Magazine ; the Imperial Magazine ; the Boyal Female Magazine ; 
the Universal Beview ; the Lady's Museum ; the Musical Maga- 



128 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

zine ; and the British Magazine, or Monthly Repository for Gentle- 
men and Ladies. 

See all her progeny, illustrious sight ! 

Behold, and count them, as they rise to light. 

As Berecynthia, while her offspring vie 

In homage to the Mother of the sky, 

Surveys around her, in the blest abode, 

A hundred sons, and ev'ry son a God : 

Not less with glory mighty Dullness crown' d, 

Shall take thro' Grub-street her triumphant round : 

And her Parnassus glancing o'er at once, 

Behold a hundred sons, and each a Dunce. 



Whether with equal triumph she beheld the new recruit advance 
to take his place, may admit of question. But her favourite 
Purdons, Hills, Willingtons, Kenricks, Shiels, Bakers, Guthries, 
Wotys, Ryders, Collyers, Joneses, Pilkingtons, Huddlestone 
Wynnes, and Hiffernans, were always at hand to comfort her : 
and there was an ill-fashioned out-of-the-way corner, in even her 
domain, for temporary reception of the Smolletts and the Johnsons ; 
men who owed her no allegiance, but had not yet deserted Grub- 
street altogether. "It is a street in London," was Johnson's 
definition, four years before the present, " much inhabited by 
"writers of small histories, dictionaries, and" temporary poems: 
"whence any mean production is called Grub-street." Why, a 
man might enter even Grub-street, then, with bold and cheerful 
heart, seeing the author of the English Dictionary there. For 
there, as occasion called, he was still to be seen : poor, persevering, 
proud ; 

"Unplaced, unpension'd, no man's heir or slave ;" 

inviting the world to take heed that indeed he was there, "tugging 
' ' at the oar. " 

With that great, independent soul of his, Samuel Johnson had 
no reproach for Fortune : she might come to him now, or stay 
away for ever. What other kind of man he might have been, if 
something more than fourpence halfpenny a day had welcomed him 
in the outset ; or if houseless and homeless street- wanderings with 
Savage, and resolutions to stand by his country, bad been fore- 
stalled by house and home, and resolution of his country to stand 
by him ; is not in his case a matter of much importance. He 
dealt with life as he found it ; toil, envy, want, the patron, arid 
the jail, he grappled with as they came ; and the profession of 
literature he had now quietly, and finally, accepted upon its own 
terms. Repulsed from the west-end mansion, he turned to the 
counters of the east ; insulted by bookseller Osborne, he knocked 
him down with one of his own folios ; decently paid by booksellea 



chap. I.] WRITING THE BEE 129 

Millar, lie told the world to honour him for raising the rewards of 
books : and treating authorship, since the world would have it so, 
as any other trade, and still heartily embracing poverty as a 
trusted and honourable companion, was content in Grub-street, or 
any other street, to work out his case as he could. ' ' Seven years, 
"my lord, have now past," he wrote to Lord Chesterfield, on 
appearance of the Dictionary four years before, "since I waited in 
"your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during 
"which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, 
" of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it, at last, 
"to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one 
"word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. ... Is not a 
"patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man 
" struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground, 
" encumbers him with help '? The notice which you have been 
' ' pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind : 
"but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy 
"it ; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it ; till I am known, 
f ' and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not 
"to confess obligations where no benefit has been received ; or to 
"be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to 
"a patron, which Providence has enabled me to do for myself." 
What ! said he in more familiar mood to Garrick, have I sailed a 
long and difficult voyage round the world of the English language, 
and does he now send out his cock-boat to tow me into harbour ] 
And from this man, even now, there was nothing to separate 
the humblest of literary workmen. Here were his words, as a 
trumpet, to call them to the field ; and there he was himself, in 
person, to animate the struggle. ' ' What reception I shall meet 
" with on the shore, I know not : whether the sound of bells, 
"and acclamations of the people, which Ariosto talks of in his 
"last Canto, or a general murmur of dislike, I know not : whether 
"I shall find upon the coast a Calypso that will court, or a Poly- 
"pheme that will resist. But if Polypheme comes, have at his 
"eye." To what, then, should he first look, who, hitherto a 
compelled and reluctant dweller on the threshold of literature, was 
now of his own resolute choice advancing within to try his fortune, 
if not to this great, unyielding figure of Samuel Johnson, for 
courage and sustainment 1 There, beyond a doubt, were the 
thoughts of Oliver Goldsmith now ; — -with poverty, not simply 
endured, but made a badge of honour ; with independence, though 
indeed but a bookseller's servant ; without remonstrance or uneasy 
resistance, should even the worst attendants of the garret continue 
to be his lot for ever. " He assured me," says the author of the 
Rambler of his friend Ofellus " that thirty pounds a year was* 

G 3 



130 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book in. 

' ' enough, to enable a man to live in London without being 
"contemptible. He allowed ten pounds for cloth.es and linen. 
" He said a man might live in a garret at eighteenpence a week ; 
"few people would inquire where he lodged ; and if they did, it 
"was easy to say, Sir, I am to be found at such a place. By 
" spending threepence in a coffee-house, he might be for some 
" hours every day in very good company ; he might dine for sixpence, 
" breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, and do without supper. 
"On clean-shirt day, he could go abroad and pay visits." Nor 
were these the holiday theories of one to whom the practice of 
•poverty was not still familiar. Here lay the singular worth of 
Johnson's example : that the world of enemies as well as friends 
were beginning, in a poor man, to recognise an intellectual chief 
and potentate of literature, a man who had the right to rule them. 
"He and I were never cater-cousins," wrote Smollett to Wilkes a 
month or two before the date to which I have brought this narra- 
tive, and in the same letter Smollett calls him the " Great Cham 
"of literature." Yet the great cham's povertj 7 " was obliged in 
this very year to surrender Gough-square for a humbler lodging in 
Gray's Inn : that same Gough-square in Fleet-street, where Doctor 
Bumey had found him amid a chaos of Greek folios, and with the 
moderate accommodation of one deal writing-desk and a chair and a 
half; the entire seat offered to his visitor, and himself tottering 
on its three-legged and one-armed fellow. Nay, some few brief 
years before, he had been placed under arrest for five pounds 
eighteen shillings ; though already he had written London, the 
Vanity of Human Wishes, and the Rambler, and was author of 
The English Dictionary. 

Now, week by week, in a paper of Mr. John Newbery's, he 
sent forth the Idler. What he was, and what with a serious 
earnestness, be it wrong or right, he had come into the world to 
say and do, were at last becoming evident to all. Colleges were 
glad to ha^e him visit them, and a small enthusiastic circle was 
gradually forming around him. The Reynoldses, Bennet Lang- 
tons, and Topham Beauclercs, had thus early given in their 
allegiance ; and Arthur Murphy was full of wonder at his sub- 
mitting to contradiction, when they dined together this last 
Cliristnias day with young Mr. Burke of Wimpole-street. But 
not more known or conspicuous was the consideration thus exacted, 
than the poverty which still waited on it, and claimed its share. 
So might literature avenge herself, in this penniless champion, for 
the disgrace of the money-bags of Walpole and Pelham. " I have 
" several times called on Johnson," wrote Grainger to Percy, some 
months before the present date. " to pay him part of your subcrip- 
"tion" (for his edition of Shakespeare). "I say part, because he 






chap, i.] WHITING THE BEE. 131 

"never thinks of working if lie has a couple of guineas in his 
"pocket." And again a month later: "As to his Shakespeare, 
"movet, sed non promovet. I shall feed him occasionally with 
"guineas." It was thus the good Mr. Newbery found it best to 
feed him too ; and in that worthy publisher's papers many memo- 
randa of the present year were found, in record of Lent Mr. 
Johnson one pound one. For, in his worst distress, it was still 
but of literature Mr. Johnson begged or borrowed : to her he was 
indebted for his poverty, and to her only would he owe his 
independence. When his mother was dying, he did not ask his 
friend Mr. Reynolds, the fashionable painter in receipt of thou- 
sands, for the six guineas he sent to comfort her death-bed : it 
was the advance of a printer. When, in the present year, she 
died, he paid the expenses of her funeral with the manuscript of 
Easselas. 

So schooled to regard the struggle of life and literature as one, 
and in midst of all apparent disadvantage to venerate its worth 
and sacredness, the author of the Enquiry into the State of Polite 
Learning stepped cheerfully forward into the market of books, and 
offered his wares for sale. Bookseller Wilkie, of the Bible in St. 
Paul's-churchyard, a spirited man in his way, and one of the fore- 
most of magazine speculators, proposed a weekly publication of 
original essays, something in the Rambler form, but once instead 
of twice a week, and with greater variety of matter. Goldsmith 
assented; and on Saturday the 6th of October, 1759, there appeared, 
price threepence, to be continued every Saturday, The Bee. 

Floriferis ut Apes in saltibus omnia libant 
Omnia Nos itidem 

was its motto ; learned, yet of pleasant promise ; taken from 
Lucretius. It was printed "neatly," as the advertisement in the 
London Chronicle of the 29th September had promised that it 
should be ; "in crown octavo, and on good paper, containing 
" two sheets or thirty-two pages, stitched in blue covers." In 
other respects also it kept the bookseller's advertised promise ; 
" consisting of a variety of essays on the amusements, follies, 
" and vices in fashion, particularly the most recent topics of 
" conversation, remarks on theatrical exhibitions, memoirs of 
"modern literature, &c. <fec." And on the back of the blue 
cover, Mr. Wilkie begged leave to inform the public " that every 
" twelve numbers would make a handsome pocket volume, at the 
" end of which should be given an emblematical frontispiece, 
"title, and table of contents." So there was reasonable hope 
at starting ; and no doubt a long line of handsome pocket volumes 
already jostled each other, in Goldsmith's lively brain. 



132 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

The first number, it must be said, was of good promise. One 
finds a lack of its wisdom and its lightness in books ' ' stitched in 
" blue covers " now. The introduction disclaimed relationship to 
the magazine trade and family ; refused to tempt its readers with 
"three beautiful prints, curiously coloured from nature," or to 
take any kind of merit from "its bulk or its frontispiece ;" and 
invoked for itself, with mixed mirth and earnestness, a class of 
readers that should know the distinction between a botwnot for 
White's, and a jest for the Cat and Bagpipes in St. Giles's. There 
was a letter on the Poles ; a notice of the death of Voltaire's 
victim, Maupertuis ; and, under the title of Alcander and Septi- 
mius, a popular version of that beautiful tale of Boccaccio, which 
afterwards suggested to a writer who belonged to Goldsmith's 
country, took early inspiration from his genius, and bore up 
uncrushed against as desperate poverty by the force of his example, 
the manly and earnest tragedy of Grisvppus. ISTor, since the 
delightful gossip of Cibber had raised the curtain on the Mount- 
forts, Nokeses, and Bettertons of a past age, had any such just or 
lively writing on the theatres been given to the world, as the 
playhouse criticism of the Bee. 

The first of his papers on this subject pointed out the superiority 
of French comic acting over English, and its causes, and had 
some happy illustrations from his own experience. His later 
remarks, on the want of general stage discipline in England 
(" dirty-shirted guards rolling their eyes round upon the audience, 
" instead of keeping them fixed upon the actors") ; on skilful manage- 
ment of gesture (in which he excepts Garrick and Mrs. Clive from 
his censure, placing them on a level with the French) ; and in 
explanation of the ill-success of the English operatic stage, where 
he touches the springs that operate to this hour ; still further 
demonstrate how competent he was to this department of criticism. 

But, like Hume's Epigoniad effort, all this was uphill work : his 
first Bee had an idle time of it, and greater favour was asked for 
the second in a paid-for newspaper paragraph of particular earnest- 
ness. "The public," said this advertisement, which had apathetic 
turn in it, " is requested to compare this with other periodical per- 
' '• formances which more pompously solicit their attention. If upon 
"perusal it be found deficient either in humour, elegance, or 
" variety, the author will readily acquiesce in their censure. It 
"is possible the reader may sometimes draw a prize, and even 
"should it turn up a blank it costs him but threepence." In 
number the second, for that small sum, was a most agreeable 
little lesson on Dress, against fault-finders and dealers in ridicule, 
proving by example of cousin Hannah that such folks are them- 
selves the most ridiculous ; and a much sounder notion of a patriot 






chap, i.] WRITING THE BEE. 133 

king than Bolingbroke's, in homely sketches of Charles the Twelfth 
of Sweden, in remark on the difficulties of so educating princes 
that " the superior dignity of man to that of royalty " should 
be their leading lesson, and in warning against the folly of en- 
trusting a charge so sacred to men ' ' who themselves have acted in 
" a sphere too high to know mankind." A delightful essay in the 
same number, with Cardinal de Retz and Dick Wildgoose side by 
side, to prove that pleasure is in ourselves, not in the objects 
offered for our amusement, and that philosophy should force the 
trade of happiness when nature has denied the means, also well 
deserves mention. 

The third number opened with a paper on the Use of Language : 
to which the grave philologist resorting, found language he was little 
used to. It was a plea for the poor : an essay to prove that he 
who best knew how to conceal his necessities and desires, was the 
most likely person to find redress, and that the true use of speech 
was not to express wants, but conceal them. All of us have known 
the Jack Spindle of this exquisite sketch, some perhaps relieved 
him ; and many have undergone the truth of his life's philosophy, 
that to have much, or to seem to have it, is the only way to have 
more, since it is the man who has no occasion to borrow, that alone 
finds numbers willing to lend. " You then, O ye beggars of my 
"acquaintance," exclaimed Goldsmith, " whether in rags or lace, 
"whether in Kent-street or the Mall, whether at Smyrna or St. 
" Giles's, might I advise you as a friend, never seem in want of the 
"favour you solicit. Apply to every passion but pity for redress. 
" You may find relief from vanity, from self-interest, or from avarice, 
"but seldom from compassion." Following this were three well- 
written characters ; — of Father Feyjoo, whose popular essays 
against degrading superstitions have since procured him the title 
of the Spanish Addison ; of Alexandrian Hypatia, afterwards im- 
mortalised by Gibbon ; and of Lysippus, an imaginary representative 
of some peculiarities in the essayist himself, and timely assertor of 
the ordinary virtues as opposed to what are commonly mistaken for 
the great ones. 

Still the churlish public would not buy the Bee ; and the fourth 
number's opening article was a good-humoured comment on that 
fact. Not a newspaper or magazine, he said, that had not left him 
far behind ; they had got to Islington at least, while the sound of 
Bow bell still stayed in his ears : nevertheless, " if it were only to 
"spite all Grub-street," he was resolved to write on ; and he made 
light-hearted announcement to the world of what he had written 
to Bryanton. " If the present generation will not hear my voice, 
"hearken, O Posterity! to you I call, and from you I expect 
" redress ! What rapture will it not give, to have the Scaligers, 



IM OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi, 

' ; Daciers, and Warburtons of future times commenting with admi- 
' c ration upon every line I now write, and working away those 
" ignorant creatures who offer to arraign my merit, with all the viru- 
" lence of learned reproach. Ay, my friends, let them feel it ; call 
" names ; never spare them ; they deserve it all, and ten times 
" more." In a like playful tone are his closing threats, that, if not 
better supported he must throw off all connection with taste, and 
fairly address his countrymen in the engaging style and manner of 
other periodical pamphlets. He will change his title into the 
Royal Bee, he says, the Anti-gallican Bee, or the Bee's Magazine. 
He will lay in a proper stock of popular topics ; such as encomiums 
on the King of Prussia, invectives against the Queen of Hungary 
and the French, the necessity of a militia, our undoubted sove- 
reignty of the seas, reflections upon the present state of affairs, a 
dissertation upon liberty, some seasonable thoughts upon the in- 
tended bridge of Blackfriars, and an address to Britons. The his- 
tory of an old woman whose tooth grew three inches long shall not 
be omitted, nor an ode upon "our victories," nor a rebus, nor an 
acrostic upon Miss Peggy P — •, nor a journal of the weather. And 
he will wind up the whole, so that the public shall have no choice 
but to purchase, with four extraordinary pages of letterpress, a 
beautiful map of England, and two prints curiously coloured from 
nature. Such was the booksellers' literature of the day : the pro- 
fitable contribution of Paternoster-row and Grub-street, to the 
world's intellectual cultivation. 

While he satirised it thus good-naturedly, . Goldsmith took 
care also to append graver remarks on the more serious matter it 
involved, and which with his own experience lay so near his heart ; 
but in do querulous spirit. He is now content to have found out 
the reason why mediocrity should have its rewards at once, and 
excellence be paid in reversion. There is, in these earliest essays, 
something more pleasing than even their undoubted elegance and 
humour, in that condition of mind. If neglects and injuries are 
still to be his portion, you do not now despair that he will turn 
them to commodities. It is not by his cries and complainings you 
shall hereafter trace him to his neglected, ill -furnished, wretched 
home. As he watches its naked cobwebbed walls, he finds matter 
for amusement to the readers of the Bee, in watching the spiders 
that have refuge there ; and in his fourth number puts forth an 
instructive paper on the habits and predatory life of that most 
wary, ingenious, hungry, and persevering insect. 

He was not to be daunted, now. Looking closely into his life, 
one finds that other works beside this of the Bee were ekeing out 
its scanty supplies. He was writing for the Busy Body, published 
thrice a week for twopence by worthy Mr. Pottinger, and brought 



CHAP. I.] 



WRITING THE BEE. 



135 




out but three days after the Bee. He was writing for the Lady's 

Magazine, started not many days later by persevering Mr. Wilkie, 

in the hope of propping up the Bee. He 

had taken his place, and would go to 

his journey's end. Since the " pleasure 

"stage coach" had not opened its door 

to him, he had mounted "the waggon 

"of industry;" not yet despairing, it 

might be, to be overtaken again by his 

old "vanity whim;" and with such 

help, even hopeful to come up with the 

"landau of riches," and find lodgment 

at last in the " fame machine." We 

note this p]easant current of his thoughts 

in the Bee's fif^h number. There, in that 

last conveyance he places Addison, Steele, 

Swift, Pope, and Congreve ; and, vainly 

stretching out a number of his own 

little blue-backed book to entice the 

goodly company, resolves to be useful 

since he may not be ambitious, and to earn by assiduity what 

merit does not open to him. But not the less cheerfully does he 

concede to others, what for himself he may not yet command. 

He shuts fame's door, indeed, on Arthur Murphy, but opens it to 

Hume and to Johnson : he closes it against Smollett's History, but 

opens it to his Peregrine Pickle and his Roderick Random. And 

with this paper, I doubt not, began his first fellowship of letters 

in a higher than the Grub-street region. Shortly after this, I trace 

Smollett to his door ; and, for what he had said of the author of 

the Rambler, Johnson soon grasped his hand. " This was a very 

"grave personage, whom at some distance I took for one of the 

' ' most reserved and even disagreeable figures I had seen ; but as he 

" approached, his appearance improved ; and when I could dis- 

"tinguish him thoroughly, I perceived that in spite of the severity 

" of his brow, he had one of the' most goodnatured countenances 

" that could be imagined." In that sentence lay the germ of one of 

the pleasantest of literary friendships. 

The poor essayist's habits, however, know little change as yet. 
His single chair and his window-bench have but to accommodate 
Mr. Wilkie's devil, waiting for proofs ; or Mr. Wilkie himself, 
resolute for arrears of copy. The landlady of Green Arbour-court 
remembered one festivity there, which seems to have been highly 
characteristic. A * ' gentleman " called on a certain evening, and 
asking to see her lodger, went unannounced up stairs. She then 
heard Goldsmith's room door pushed open, closed again sharply 



136 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book in. 

from within, and the key turned in the lock : after this, the sound 
of a somewhat noisy altercation reached her ; but it soon subsided : 
and to her surprise, not unmingled with alarm, the perfect silence 
that followed continued for more than three hours. It was a 
great relief to her, she said, when the door was again opened, and 
the "gentleman," descending more cheerfully than he had entered, 
sent her out to a neighbouring tavern for some supper. Mr. 
Wilkie or Mr. Pottinger had obtained his arrears, and could afford 
a little comforting reward to the starving author. 

Perhaps he carried off with him that mirthful paper on the clubs 
of London, to which a pleasant imagination most loved to pay 
festive visits on solitary and supperless days. Perhaps that paper 
on public rejoicings for a victory which described the writer's 
lonely wanderings a few nights before, from Ludgate-hill to 
Charing-cross, through crowded and ilium mated streets, past punch- 
houses and coffee-houses, and where excited shoe-makers, thinking 
wood to be nothing like leather, were asking with frightful oaths 
whatever would become of religion if the wooden-soled French 
papishes came over ! Perhaps that more affecting lonely journey 
through the London streets, which the Bee soon after published 
with the title of the City Night Piece, in which there was so much 
of the past struggle and the lesson it had left, so much of the 
grief-taught sympathy, so much of the secret of the genius, of 
tolerant, gentle-hearted Goldsmith. "What he was to the end of 
his London life, when miserable outcasts had cause with the great 
and learned to lament him, this paper shows him to have been at 
its beginning. The kind-hearted man would wander through the 
streets at night, to console and reassure the misery he could not 
otherwise give help to. "While he thought of the rich and happy 
who were at rest ; while he looked up even to the wretched roof 
that gave shelter to himself ; he could not bear to think of those 
to whom the streets were the only home. " Strangers, wan- 
*' derers, and orphans," too humble in their circumstances to expect 
redress, too completely and utterly wretched for pity; — "poor 
' ' shivering girls " who had seen happier days, and been nattered 
into beauty and into sin, now lying peradventure at the very doors 
of their betrayers; — "poor houseless creatures" to whom the 
world, responsible for their guilt, gives reproaches but will not give 
relief. These were teachers in life's truths, who spoke with a 
sterner and wiser voice than that of mere personal suffering. " The 
" slightest misfortunes of the great, the most imaginary uneasiness of 
' ' the rich, are aggravated with all the power of eloquence, and held 
" up to engage our attention and sympathetic sorrow. The poor weep 
"unheeded, persecuted by every subordinate species of tyranny; 
"and every law which gives others security becomes an enemy to 



DAVID GARRICK. 



137 



"them. Why was this heart of mine formed with so much sensi- 
•'bility, or why was not my fortune adapted to its impulse ? " In 





thoughts like these, and in confirmed resolution to make the poor 
his clients and write down those tyrannies of law, the night wan- 
derings of the thoughtful writer not unprofitably ended. 

It was a resolution very manifest in his next literary labour. 



CHAPTER II. 



DAYID GARRICK. 1759. 

Ojst the 29th of November, the Bee's brief life closed, with its 
eighth number : and in the following month its editor, Mr. 
Oliver Goldsmith, was sought out both by that distinguished ,,, „:, 
author Doctor Smollett, and by Mr. John Newbery the 
bookseller, of St. Paul's-churchyard. But as he had meanwhile 
made earnest application to Mr. David Garrick for his interest in 
an election at the Society of Arts, it will be best to describe at 
once the circumstances involved in that application, and its result 



138 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book in. 

on the poor author's subsequent intercourse with the rich manager 
and proprietor of the theatre royal in Drury-lane. 

Goldsmith was passionately fond of the theatre. In prosperous 
days, it will ring with his humour and cheerfulness ; in these 
struggling times, it was the help and refuge of his loneliness. We 
have seen him steal out of his garret to hear Columba sing : and 
if she fell short of the good old music he had learnt to love at 
Lissoy, the other admiration he was taught there, of happy human 
faces, at the theatre was always in his reach. If there is truth in . 
what was said by Sir Richard Steele, that being happy, and seeing 
others happy, for two hours, is a duration of bliss not at all to be 
slighted by so short-lived creature as man, it is certain that he 
who despises the theatre adds short-sightedness to short life. 
If he is a rich man, he will be richer for hearing there of what 
account the poor may be ; if he is a poor man, he will not be 
poorer for the knowledge that those above him have their human 
sympathies. Sir Thomas Overbury held a somewhat strong opinion 
as to this ; thinking the playhouse more necessary in a well- 
governed commonwealth than the school, because men were better 
taught by example than by precept : and however light the dis- 
regard it has fallen into now, it does really seem to be a question 
not altogether unimportant, whether a high and healthy entertain- 
ment, the nature of which, conservative of all kindly relations 
between man and man, is to encourage, refine, and diffuse 
humanity, might not claim a kind and degree of support which in 
England has been always withheld from it. 

This remark occurs to me here, because many disappointments 
in connection with it will occur hereafter ; and already even 
Garrick's fame and strength had been shaken by his difficult rela- 
tions with men of letters. " I am as much an admirer of Mr. 
" Garrick," said Mr. Ralph, in his Case of Authors by Profession, 
published in 1758, "and his excellences, as I ought to be : and I 
' ' envy him no part of his good fortune. But then, though I am 
' ' free to acknowledge he was made for the stage, I cannot be 
" brought to think the stage was made only for him ; or that the 
" fate of every dramatic writer ought either to be at his mercy, or 
" that of any other manager whatever. . . . When the playhouse is 
"named," he added bitterly, "I make it a point to pull off 
"my hat, and think myself obliged to the lowest implement 
" belonging to it. I am ready to make my best acknowledgments 
"to a harlequin, who has continence enough to look upon an 
' ' author in the green-room, of what consideration soever, without 
" laughing at him." Other pamphlets followed in the cry ; and 
Ned Purdon drew up a number of anonymous suggestions as to 
" how Mr. Garrick ought to behave." 



chap. ii. ] DAVID GARRICK. 139 

It was the employment of this tone that introduced needless' 
elements of bitterness, for the charge was a simple one, and might 
have been stated simply. No doubt Garrick, in common with 
every manager-actor, before or since his time, was fairly exposed 
to it. I have turned to the play-bills of the season directly pre- 
ceding the appearance of Mr. Ralph's pamphlet, and find, amidst 
revivals of Fletcher's Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, and Shirley's 
comedy of The Gamester, and Shakespeare's Tempest as an opera, 
and Taming of the Shrew as a farce, but one original production : 
Lilliput, played by children. It is not immaterial to the question, 
however, to recount the highest tragic claimants thus affronted by 
Shakespeare, Fletcher, Shirley, and Lilliput They were White- 
head, Crisp, Francis, Francklin, Glover, Brown, Mallet, Murphy, 
and Dodsley : for denying whose higher attractiveness to the 
Shakespeares and Fletchers, nay, for preferring even the comic to 
that tragic Lilliput, the public seems a better object of attack than 
the manager. When, some years afterwards, Horace Walpole 
joined the cry, this had sarcastic admission. " Garrick is treating 
"the town as it deserves," he said ei and likes to be treated : with 
' l scenes, fireworks, and his own writing. A good new play I 
1 ' never expect to see more ; nor have seen since the Provoked, 
"Husband, which came out when I was at school." Was it 
Garrick's crime, without good new plays, to make the venture of 
good old ones ? 

In truth, looking fairly at his theatrical management, with the 
light his published Correspondence has thrown upon it, it was a 
great improvement, in all generous and liberal points, on those 
which preceded it. Booth treated writers of Anne much more 
scurvily than the writers of George the Second were treated by 
Garrick. " Booth often declared," says his biographer, " in public 
" company, that he and his partners lost money by new plays ; 
" and that, if he were not obliged to it, he would seldom give his 
"consent to perform one of them." Garrick transposed and 
altered often ; but he never forced upon the unhappy author of a 
tragedy a change in the religion of his hero, nor told a dramatist 
of good esteem that he had better have turned to an honest and 
laborious calling, nor complacently prided himself on chodking 
singing birds, when his stern negative had silenced a young 
aspirant. Those were the achievements of manager Cibber. He 
was at all times fonder than needful of his own importance, it is 
true : but society has no right to consent to even the nominal de- 
pression, in the so-called social scale, of a man whose calling exacts 
no common accomplishments, and then resent the self-exaggeration 
un wholesomely begotten on its own injustice. When Junius took 
offence at the player whom dukes and duchesses tolerated at their 



140 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

table, it was not a matter to waste wit upon, or sarcasm, or scath- 
ing eloquence : he simply told the " Vagabond " to stick to his 
pantomimes. Even men of education were known to have 
pursued Garrick, when on country visits to noblemen of his 
acquaintance, with dirty, clumsily-folded notes, passed amid the 
ill-concealed laughter of servants to the great man's guest, with the 
address of " Mr. David Garrick, Player." It asked a strength 
which Garrick had not, to disregard this vulgar folly ; it wounded 
him where he was known to be weak ; it tempted him to those self- 
assertions which imply the failure of self-reliance ; it poisoned his 
entire and constant faith in all who were not solely governed by his 
will ; and it blinded him to the ridicule with which even dependents 
listened to his public distress on the mornings of crowded rehearsals, 
that to decline some ambassador's proffered courtesies made him 
wretched, but prior promises to countess dowagers must be kept. 

A satisfaction of this kind was afforded to Mr. Ralph, when, in 
the season (57-58) of this the appearance of his pamphlet, the 
outraged manager, laughing heartily at all authors' complaints and 
attacks, and tearing up their rebellious pamphlets with as elaborate 
carelessness as he would the card of a duke, lord, judge, or bishop, 
to strike awe and admiration into bystanders, did yet, most 
laboriously and most clumsily, bring out Doctor Smollett, in a 
piece altogether unworthy of his genius. The concession was 
appropriately followed by production of the Agis of Mr. Home ; 
not without reason cried over, for its exclusively modern Greek, 
by Douglas-loving Gray, and compared to "an antique statue, 
' ' painted white and red, frizzed and dressed in a negligee made by a 
' ' Yorkshire mantua-maker. " Then, failure and laughter repaying 
this pains and warmth, the cold fit came violently back ; and in 
the season of '58 and '9 the wrongs of Robert Dodsley and Arthur 
Murphy, the bereaved Cleone and deserted Orphan of Chma, were 
the talk of the town. The topic seemed to force itself on one who 
was delivering in a protest against the wrongs of men of letters ; 
and with the Enquiry into Polite Learning appeared these remarks, 
in a chapter devoted to the stage. 

Our poet's performance must undergo a process truly chemical, before it is 
presented to the public. It must be tried in the manager s fire, strained through 
a licenser, and suffer from repeated corrections till it may be a mere caput 
mortuum when it arrives before the public. It may be said that we have a 
sufficient number of plays upon our theatres already, and therefore there is no 
need of new ones. But are they sufficiently good ? And is the credit of our 
age nothing ? Must our present times pass away unnoticed by posterity ? If 
these are matters of indifference, it then signifies nothing, whether we are to 
be entertained with the actor or the poet, with fine sentiments or painted 
canvas ; or whether the dancer or the carpenter be constituted master of the 
ceremonies. How is it at present ? Old pieces are revived, and scarcely any 



chap, ii.] DAVID GARRICK. 141 

new ones admitted. The actor is ever in our eye, the poet seldom permitted 
to appear ; and the stage, instead of serving the people, is made subservient 
to the interests of 'avarice. Getting a play on even in three or four years, is a 
privilege reserved only for the happy few who have the arts of courting the 
Manager as well as the Muse : who have adulation to please his vanity, power- 
ful patrons to support their merit, or money to indemnify disappointment. 
Our Saxon ancestors had but one name for a wit and a witch. I will not 
dispute the propriety of uniting those characters then : but the man who, 
under the present discouragements, ventures to write for the stage, whatever 
claim he may have to the appellation of a wit, at least has no right to be 
called a conjuror. 

It is impossible to think Goldsmith wholly justified in this, and 
there are passages of sneering and silly objection to Shakespeare in 
immediate connection with it which very painfully reveal the 
temper in which it was written ; but it is yet unquestionable that 
the feeling which pervades the extract, as well as the pamphlet of 
Mr. Ralph, was now becoming general with the literary class, and 
tended greatly to embitter the successes of Garrick' s later life. In 
connection with it, at the same time, a regret will always arise, 
remembering the differences of a Goldsmith and a Ralph, that the 
lively irritable actor should have been indiscriminate in the resent- 
ments it provoked, and unable, in any instance, to conceive a 
better actuating motive than the envy his prosperity had excited. 
Thomas Davies tells us, that when, somewhere about the time of 
his connection with the Bee, Goldsmith sought to obtain, what a 
struggling man of letters was thought to have some claim to, the 
vacant secretaryship of the Society of Arts, Garrick made answer 
to a personal application for his vote, that Mr. Goldsmith having 
" taken pains to deprive himself of his assistance by an unprovoked 
" attack upon his management of the theatre in his Present State of 
"Learning," it was " impossible he could lay claim to any recom- 
" mendation from him. " Davies adds, that "Goldsmith, instead 
' ' of making an apology for his conduct, either from misinformation 
' ' or misconception, bluntly replied, ' in truth he had spoken his 
" 'mind, and believed what he said was very right.' The manager 
1 ' dismissed him with civility. " 

The manager might with wisdom have done more. The blunt 
reply, in a generous man's interpretation, should at least have 
blunted the fancied wrong. It is painful to think that neither of 
these famous men, whose cheerful gaieties of heart were the natural 
bonds of a mutual sympathy and fast alliance, should throughout 
their lives have wholly lost the sense of this first unlucky meeting. 
As Goldsmith himself removed from the second edition of the Polite 
Learning much of the remark that had given Garrick most offence, 
and in the ordinary copies it is now no longer found, it may the 
more freely be admitted that the grounds of offence were not 



142 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

altogether imaginary. Indeed, besides what I have quoted, there 
were incidental expressions yet more likely to breed resentment in 
a sensitive, quick nature. " I am not at present writing for a 
"party," said Goldsmith, "but above theatrical connexions in 
"every sense of the expression. I have no particular spleen against 
' ' the fellow who sweeps the stage with the besom, or the hero who 
" brushes it with his train. It were a matter of indifference to 
' ' me, whether our heroines are in keeping, or our candle-snuffers 
' ' burn their fingers, did not such make a great part of public care 
"and polite conversation. Our actors assume all that state off the 
' ' stage which they do on it ; and, to use an expression borrowed 
1 ' from the green-room, every one is up in his part. I am sorry to 
' i say it, they seem to forget their real characters. " With sorrow 
is it also to be said, that here the writer was manifestly wrong. 
Mr. Ralph's "implements" and "harlequins" were not less 
tasteful and considerate than this jeering tone. 

There is no intellectual art so peculiarly circumstanced as that 
of the actor. If, in the hurried glare which surrounds him, each 
vanity and foible that he has comes forth in strong relief, it is 
hard to grudge him the better incidents to that brilliant lot for 
which he pays so dearly. His triumphs had need be bright and 
dazzling, for their fires are spent as soon as kindled ; his enjoy- 
ments intense, for of all mental influences they wither soonest. 
He may plant in infinite hearts the seeds of goodness, of ideal 
beauty, and of practical virtue ; but with their fruits his name will 
not be remembered, or remembered only as a name. And surely, 
if he devotes a genius that might command success in any profes- 
sion, to one whose rewards, if they come at all, must be immediate 
as the pleasure and instruction it diffuses, it is a short-sighted 
temper that would eclipse the pleasure and deny the rewards. 

The point of view at this time taken by Goldsmith was, in fact, 
obscured by his own unlucky fortunes ; but the injustice he shrunk 
from committing in the case of the prosperous painter, Mr. 
Reynolds, he should not thus carelessly have inflicted on the 
prosperous actor, Mr. Garrick. If to neither artist might be 
conceded the claim of creative genius, at least the one might have 
claimed to be a painter of portraits, even as the other was. Uneasy 
relations, indeed, which only exist between author and actor, have 
had a manifest tendency at all times unfairly to disparage the 
actor's intellectual claims, and to set any of the inferior arts above 
them. Nevertheless, the odds might be made more even. The deepest 
and rarest beauties of poetry are those which the actor cannot 
grasp ; but in the actor's startling triumphs, whether of movement, 
gesture, look, or tone, the author has no great share. Thus, were 
accounts fairly struck with the literary class, a Garrick might be 






chap. in. OVERTURES FROM SMOLLETT AND MR. NEWBERY. 143 

honestly left between the gentle and grand superiority of a 
Shakespeare on the one hand, who, from the heights of his im- 
measurable genius, smiles down help and fellowship upon him ; 
and the eternal petulance and pretensions of an Arthur Murphy 
on the other, who, from the round of a ladder to which of himself 
he never could have mounted, looks down with ludicrous contempt 
on what Mr. Ralph would call the " implements" of his elevation. 



CHAPTEK III. 



OVERTURES FROM SMOLLETT AND MR. NEWBERY. 1759—1760. 

But, at the door of Mr. Oliver Goldsmith, Doctor Smollett and 
Mr. Newbery have been waiting us all this while, and 
neither of them belonged to that leisurely class which can jJ, g j 
very well afford to wait. The Doctor was full of energy 
and movement always, as one of his own headlong heroes ; and 
who remembers not the philanthropic bookseller in the Vicar of 
Wakefield, the good-natured man with the red-pimpled face, who 
had no sooner alighted but he was in haste to be gone, ' ' for he 
"was ever on business of the utmost importance, and was at that 
"time actually compiling materials for the history of one Mr. 
"Thomas Trip." But not on Mr. Thomas Trip's affairs had the 
child-loving publisher now ventured up Break-neck-steps ; and 
upon other than the old Critical business was the author of 
Peregrine Pickle a visitor in Green Arbour-court. Both had new 
and important schemes in hand, and with both it was an object to 
secure the alliance and services of Goldsmith. Smollett had at all 
times not a little of the Pickle in him, and Newbery much of the 
Mr. Trip ; but there was a genial good-heartedness in both, which 
makes it natural and pleasant to have to single out these two men, 
as the first active friends and patrons of the author of the unsuc- 
cessful Bee. Their offers were of course accepted ; and it seems 
to imply something, however slight, of a worldly advance in con- 
nection with them, that, in the month which followed, the luckless 
Bee was issued in the independent form of a small half-crown 
volume by Mr. Wilkie, and Kenrick received instructions from 
Mr. Ralph Griffiths to treat it in the Monthly Review i ' with the 
"greatest candour toward an unsuccessful Author." 

The 1st of January, 1760, saw the first venture launched. It 
was published for sixpence "embellished with curious copper- 
" plates," and entitled "The BriUsh Magazine, or Monthly 



144 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

" Repository for Gentlemen and Ladies. By T. Smollett, M.D. , 
" and others." It was dedicated with, much fervour to Mr. Pitt ; 
and Mr. Pitt's interest (greatly to the spleen of Horace Walpole, 
who thinks the matter worthy of mention in his Memoirs of George 
the Second) enabled Smollett to put it forth with a royal license, 
granted in consideration of the fact that Doctor Smollett had 
" represented to his Majesty that he has been at great labour and 
" expense in writing original pieces himself, and engaging other 
"gentlemen to write original pieces." The Doctor, in truth, had 
but lately left the " Bench," at the close of that three months' 
imprisonment for libel into which his spirited avowal of the author- 
ship of a criticism on Admiral Knowles had betrayed him ; and 
the king's patronage had probably been sought as a counterpoise to 
the king's prison. But the punishment itself had not been without 
its uses. In the nature of Smollett, to the last, there were not a 
few of the heedless impulses of boyhood ; and from this three 
months' steady gaze on the sadder side of things, he seems to have 
turned with tempered and gentler thoughts. In the first number 
of the British Magazine was the opening of the tale which contained 
his most feminine heroine (Aurelia Darnel), and the most amiable 
and gentlemanly of his heroes (Sir Launcelot Greaves) : for, though 
Sir Launcelot is mad, wise thoughts have made him so ; and in 
the hope to "remedy evils which the law cannot reach, to detect 
" fraud and treason, to abase insolence, to mortify pride, to dis- 
' ' courage slander, to disgrace immodesty, and to stigmatise in- 
" gratitude," he stumbles through his odd adventures. There is 
a pleasure in connecting this alliance of Smollett and Goldsmith, 
with the first approach of our great humourist to that milder 
humanity and more genial wisdom which shed its mellow rays on 
Matthew Bramble. 

Nor were the services engaged from Oliver unworthy of his 
friend's Sir Launcelot. Side by side with the kindly en- 

1 *7fi0 

7n t 09' thusiast, appeared some of the most agreeable of the Essays 
which were afterwards re-published with their writer's 
name ; and many which were never connected with it, until half a 
century after the writer's death. Here Mr. Kigmarole fell into 
that Boar's Head reverie in Eastcheap, since so many times dreamt 
over, and so full of kindly rebuke to undiscriminating praisers of 
the past. Here the shabby man in St. James's Park (Goldsmith, 
like Justice Woodcock, loved a vagabond) recounted his strolling 
adventures, with a vivacity undisturbed by poverty ; and, with his 
Merry- Andrew, Bajazet, and Wildair, laughed at Garrick in his 
glory. Here journey was made to the Fountain in whose waters 
sense and genius mingled, and by whose side the traveller found 
Johnson and Gray (a pity it did not prove so !) giving and receiving 



chap, in.] OVERTURES FROM SMOLLETT AND MR. NEWBERY. 145 

fame. And here, above all, the poor, hearty, wooden-legged beggar, 
first charmed the world with a philosophy of content and cheer- 
fulness which no misfortune could subdue. This was he who had 
lost his leg and the use of his hand, and had a wound in his breast 
which was troublesome, and was obliged to beg, but with these 
exceptions blessed his stars for knowing no reason to complain : 
some had lost both legs and an eye, but thank Heaven it was not 
so bad with him. This was he who remarked that people might 
say this and that of being in gaol, but when he was found guilty 
of being poor, and was sent to Newgate, he found it as agreeable a 
place as ever he was in, in all his life : who fought the French in 
six pitched battles, and verily believed, that, but for some good 
reason or other his captain would have given him promotion and 
made him a corporal : who was beaten cruelly by a boatswain, but 
the boatswain did it without considering what he was about : who 
slept on a bed of boards in a French prison, but with a warm 
blanket about him, because, as he remarked, he always loved to 
lie well : and to whom, when he came to sum up and balance his 
life's adventures, it occurred that had he had the good fortune to 
have lost his leg and the use of his hand on board a king's ship 
and nob a privateer, he should have had his sixpence a week for 
the rest of his days ; but that was not his chance ; one man was 
born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and another with a wooden 
ladle: "however, blessed be God, I enjoy good health." This 
was as wise philosophy as Candidas, at which Europe was then 
laughing heartily ; and it is worth mention that from the country- 
men of Voltaire this little essay should first have derived its fame. 
So popular in France was the " humble optimist," as his translator 
called him, that he is not unlikely to have visited even the halls of 
Les Delices ; to be read there, as everywhere, with mirth upon the 
face and tenderness at the heart ; perhaps to reawaken recollections 
of the ungainly wandering scholar. 

Of upwards of twenty essays thus contributed to Smollett's 
magazine, few were republished by Goldsmith ; but from other 
causes, certainly, than lack of merit. One was a criticism of two 
rival singers, two Polly Peachums then dividing Vauxhall, so 
pleasantly worded that neither could take offence ; but of temporary 
interest chiefly. Another was a caution against violent courtships, 
from a true story in the family of his uncle Contarine ; perhaps 
thought too private for reappearance in more permanent form. A 
third (not reproduced, it may be, lest the wooden-legged philo- 
sopher should lose in popularity by a companion less popular than 
himself) described, as a contrast to the happiness of the maimed 
and luckless soldier, the miseries of a healthy half-pay officer of 
unexpected fortune, unable to bear the transition from moderate 



146 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi, 

to extravagant means, and rendered so insensible by unused indul- 
gences that he had come to see Falstaff without a smile, and the 
Orphan without emotion. A fourth was a little history of 
seduction, hasty, abrupt, and not very real ; but in which the 
"hero bore such a general though indistinct resemblance to the 
immortal family of the Primroses, as to have fitly merged and 
been forgotten in their later glory. 

The last of these detached essays which I shall mention for the 
present, did not appear in the British Magazine, but much concerned 
it ; and, though not reckoned worthy of preservation by its writer, is 
evidence not to be omitted of his hearty feeling to Smollett, and 
ready resource to serve a friend. It was, in plain words, a puff of the 
British Magazine and its projector ; and a puff of as witty preten- 
sion as ever visited the ingenious brain of the yet unborn friend of 
Mr. Dangle. It purported to describe a Wow-wow ; a kind of 
newspaper club of a country town, to which the writer amusingly 
described himself driven, by his unavailing efforts to find any- 
body anywhere else. All were at the Wow-wow, from the apothe- 
cary to the drawer of the tavern ; and there he found, inspired by 
pipes and newspapers, such a smoke and fire of political discussion, 
such a setting right of all the mistakes of the generals in the war, 
such a battle, conducted with chalk, upon the blunders of Finck 
and Daun, and such quidnunc explosions against the Dutch in 
Pondicherry, that infallibly the Wow-wow must have come to a 
war of its own ' ' had not an Oxford scholar, led there by curiosity, 
' pulled a new magazine out of his pocket, in which he said there 
' were some pieces extremely curious and that deserved their 
' attention. He then read the Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves, 
' to the entire satisfaction of the audience, which being finished, he 
' threw the pamphlet upon the table : ' That piece, gentlemen,' 
' says he, ' is written in the very spirit and manner of Cervantes ; 
c ' there is great knowledge of human nature, and evident marks 
' ' of the master in almost every sentence ; and from the plan, 
' * the humour, and the execution, I can venture to say that it 

' ' dropped from the pen of the ingenious Doctor ' Every 

' one was pleased with the performance, and I was particularly 
' gratified in hearing all the sensible part of the company give 
' orders for the British Magazine." 

So said the not less anonymous or ingenious Doctor, in that 
venture of good Mr. Newbery's which started but twelve days 
after Smollett's, and in which also had been enlisted the services of 
the Green Arbour-court lodger. War is the time for newspapers ; 
and the inventive head which planned the Universal Chronicle, 
with the good taste that enlisted Johnson in its service, now made 
a bolder effort in the same direction. The first number of The 



' 



chap, in.] OVERTURES FROM SMOLLETT AND MR. NEWBERY. 147 

Piiblic Ledger was published on the 12th of January, 1760. 
Nothing less than a Daily Newspaper had the busy publisher of 
children's books projected. But a daily newspaper was not an 
appalling speculation, then. Not then, morning after morning, 
did it throw its eyes of Argus over all the world. No universal 
command was needed for it then, over sources of foreign intelligence 
that might controul and govern the money transactions of rival 
hemispheres. There existed with it, then, no costly arts for 
making and marring fortunes ; cultivated to a perfection high as 
the pigeon's flight, swift as the courier's horse, or deep as the 
secret drawer of the diplomatist's bureau. Then, it was no more 
essential to a paper's existence, that countless advertisements 
should be scattered broadcast through its columns ; than to a city's 
business, that puffing vans should perambulate its highways, and 
armies of placard-bearing paupers seize upon its pavements. 
Neither as a perfect spy of the time, nor as a full informer or high 
improver of the time, did a daily journal yet put forth its claims. 
Neither to prompt and correct intelligence, nor to great political 
or philanthropic aims, did it as yet devote itself. The triumphs 
or discomfitures of Freedom were not yet its daily themes. Not 
yet did it assume, or dare, to ride in the whirlwind and direct the 
storm of great political passions ; to grapple resistlessly with social 
abuses ; or to take broad and philosophic views of the world's con- 
temporaneous history, the history which is a-making from day to 
day. It was content with humbler duties. It called itself a daily 
register of commerce and intelligence, and fell short of even so 
much modest pretension. The letter of a Probus or a Manlius sufficed 
for discussion of the war ; and a modest rumour in some dozen lines, 
for what had occupied parliament during as many days. " We are un- 
" willing," said the editor of the Public Ledger (Mr. Griffith Jones, 
who wrote children's books for Mr. Newbery) in his first number, 
" to raise expectations which we may perhaps find ourselves unable 
I ' to satisfy : and therefore have made no mention of criticism or 
" literature, which yet we do not professedly exclude ; nor shall we 
" reject any political essays which are apparently calculated for the 
"public good." Discreetly avoiding, thus, all undue expectation, 
there quietly came forth into the world, from Mr. Bristow's office 
"next the great toy-shop in St. Paul's-churchyard," the first 
number of the Public Ledger. It was circulated gratis : with 
announcement that all future numbers would be sold for two-pence 
half-penny each. 

The first four numbers were enlightened by Probus in politics 
and Sir Simeon Swift in literature ; the one defending the war, 
the other commencing the "Banger," and both very mildly justi- 
fying the modest editorial announcements. The fifth number was 

H2 



148 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book ni. 

not so common-place. It Lad a letter (vindicating with nianly 
assertion the character and courage of the then horribly unpopular 
French, and humorously condemning the national English habit of 
abusing rival nations), which implied a larger spirit as it showed a 
livelier pen. The same hand again appeared in the next number 
but one ; and the correspondent of Green Arbour-court became 
entitled to receive two guineas from Mr. Newbery for his first 
week's contributions to the Public Ledger. His arrangement was 
to write twice in the week, and to be paid a guinea for each article. 



CHAPTEK IV. 



THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD. 1760. 

With the second week of his engagement on the Public Ledger, 
Goldsmith had taken greater courage. The letter which 
JEt 32 a PP eare( ^ on ^ ne 24th of January, though without title or 
numbering to imply intention of continuance, threw out the 
hint of a series of letters, and of a kind of narrative as in the 
Lettres Persanes. The character assumed was that of a Chinese 
visitor to London : the writer's old interest in the flowery people 
having received new strength of late, from the Chinese novel on 
which his dignified acquaintance Mr. Percy had been recently 
engaged. The second letter, still without title, appeared five days 
after the first ; some inquiry seems to have been made for their 
continuance ; and thence uninterruptedly the series went on. Not 
until somewhat advanced, were they even numbered ; they never 
received a title, until republished ; but they were talked of as the 
Chinese Letters, assumed the principal place in the paper, and 
contributed more than any other cause to its successful establish- 
ment. Sir Simeon Swift and his " Ranger," Mr. Philanthropy 
Candid and his "Visitor," struggled and departed as newspaper 
shadows are wont to do ; Lien Chi Altangi became real, and lived. 
From the ephemeral sprang the immortal. On that column of 
ungainly-looking, perishable type, depended not alone the paper of 
the day, but a book to last throughout the year, a continuous 
pleasure for the age, and one which was all for time. It amused 
the hour, was wise for the interval beyond it, is still diverting and 
instructing us, and will delight generations yet unborn. At the 
close of 1760, ninety-eight of the letters had been published ; 
within the next few months, at less regular intervals, the series 
was brought to completion ; and in the following year, the whole 



chap, iv.] THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD. 149 

were 'republished by Mr. Newbery " for the author," in two 
duodecimo volumes, but without any author's name, as " The 
" Citizen of the World ; or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher in 
f ' London to his Friend in the East. " 

" Light, agreeable, summer reading," observed the British 
Magazine, with but dry and laconic return for the Wow- wow. 
The Monthly Review had to make return of a diiferent kind, 
Mr. Griffiths now decently resolving to swallow his leek ; and 
his pliant cur Mr. Kenrick, having taken his orders to abstain 
from bark or bite, and whine approbation and apology, thus, after 
remarking that the Chinese philosopher had nothing Asiatic about 
him, did his master's bidding in his master's name : "The public 
"have been already made sufficiently acquainted with the merit of 
' \ these entertaining Letters, which were first printed in The Ledger, 
"and are supposed to have contributed not a little towards the 
" success of that paper. They are said to be the work of the lively 
" and ingenious Writer of An Enquwy into the Present State of 
"Polite Learning in Europe; a Writer whom, it seems, we un- 
designedly offended by some strictures on the conduct of many 
" of our modern Scribblers. As the observation was entirely 
"general, in its intention, we were surprised to hear that this 
" Gentleman had imagined himself in any degree pointed at, as 
" we conceive nothing can be more illiberal in a Writer, or more 
"foreign to the character of a Literary Journal, than to descend 
" to the meanness of personal reflection." Pity might be reasonably 
given to men humiliated thus, but Goldsmith withheld forgiveness. 
Private insults could not so be retracted ; nor could imputations 
which sink deepest in the simplest and most honourable natures, 
be thus easily purged away. Mr. Griffiths was left to the con- 
solation of reflecting, that he had himself eaten the dirt which it 
would have made him far happier to have flung at the Citizen of 
the World. 

In what different language, by what different men, how highly 
and justly this book has since been praised, for its fresh original 
perception, its delicate delineation of life and manners, its wit and 
humour, its playful and diverting satire, its exhilarating gaiety, 
and its clear and lively style, need not be repeated. What is to be 
said of it here, will have relation more to the character than to the 
genius of its writer. The steadier direction of his thoughts, and 
the changing aspect of his fortunes, are what I would now turn 
back to read in it. 

One marked peculiarity its best admirers have failed to observe 
upon ; its detection and exposure, not simply of the foibles and 
follies which lie upon the surface, but of those more pregnant evils 
which rankle at the heart, of society. The occasions were frequent 



150 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book in. 

in which the Chinese citizen so lifted his voice that only in a* later 
generation could he find his audience ; and they were not few, in 
which he has failed to find one even yet. He saw, in the Russian 
Empire, what by the best English statesman since has not been 
sufficiently guarded against, the natural enemy of the more 
western parts of Europe, " an enemy already possessed of great 
"strength, and, from the nature of the government, every day 
"threatening to become more powerful" (Letter lxxxvii). He 
warned the all-credulous and too-confident English of their insecure 
tenure of the American colonies ; telling them, with a truth as 
prophetic, and which anticipated the vigorous reasoning of Dean 
Tucker, that England would not lose her vigour when those colonies 
obtained their independence. He unveiled the social pretences, 
which, under colour of protecting female honour, are made the 
excuse for its violation. He denounced that evil system which 
left the magistrate, the country justice, and the squire, to punish 
transgressions in which they had themselves been the guiltiest 
transgressors. He laughed at the sordidness which makes penny 
shows of our public temples, turns Deans and Chapters into 
importunate " beggars, " and stoops to pick up half-pence at the 
tombs of our patriots and poets. He laughed at, even while he 
gloried in, the national vaunt of superiority to other nations, which 
gave fancied freedom to the prisoner, riches to the beggar, and 
enlisted on behalf of church and state fellows who had never 
profited by either. He protested earnestly against the insufficient 
pretexts that availed for the spilling of blood, in the contest then 
raging between France and England. He inveighed against the 
laws which meted out, in so much gold or silver, the price of a 
wife's or daughter's honour. He ridiculed the prevailing nostrums 
current in that age of quacks ; doubted the graces of such betailing 
and bepowdering fashions, as then made beauty hideous, and sent 
even lads cocked-hatted and wigged to school ; and had sense and 
courage to avow his contempt for that prevailing cant of con- 
noisseurship ("your Raffaelles, Correggios, and stuff") at which 
Reynolds shifted his trumpet. The abuses of church patronage 
did not escape him ; any more than the tendency to " superstition 
"and imposture " in the " bonzes and priests of all religions." He 
thought it a fit theme for mirth, that holy men should be content 
to receive all the money, and let others do all the good ; and that 
preferment to the most sacred and exalted duties should wait upon 
the whims of members of parliament, and the wants of younger 
branches of the nobility. The incapacities and neglect thus, 
engendered in the upper clergy, he also connected with that dis- 
regard of the lower, which left a reverend TruUiber undisturbed 
among his pigs, and a parson Adams to his ale in Lady Booby's 



chap, iv.] THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD. 151 

kitchen. Yet as little was he disposed to tolerate any false reaction 
from such indifference ; and at the ascetic saints of the new 
religious sect, which had risen to put down cheerfulness, and could 
find its only music in a chorus of sighs and groans, he aimed the 
shafts of his wit as freely, as at the over-indulging, gormandising 
priests of the bishop's visitation-dinner, face to face with whom, 
gorged and groaning with excess, he brought the hungry beggar, 
faint with want, to ask of them the causes of his utter destitution, 
body and soul. Nor did he spare that other dignified profession, 
which, in embarrassing what it professed to make clear, in retarding 
with cumbrous impediments the steps of justice, in reserving as a 
luxury for the rich what it pretended to throw open to all, in 
fencing round property with a multiplicity of laws and exposing 
poverty without a guard to whatever threatened or assailed it, 
countenanced and practised no less a falsehood. Almost alone in 
that age of indifference, the Citizen of the World raised his voice 
against the penal laws which then, with wanton severity, disgraced 
the statute book ; insisted that the sole means of making death an 
efficient, was to make it an infrequent, punishment ; and warned 
society of the crime of disregarding human life and the temptations 
of the miserable, by visiting petty thefts with penalties of blood. 

He who does not read for amusement only, may also find in 
these delightful letters, thus published from week to week, a 
comment of special worth on casual incidents of the time. There 
was in this year a city-campaign of peculiar cruelty. A mob has 
indiscriminate tastes for blood, and after hunting an admiral Byng 
to death will as eagerly run down a dog. On a groundless cry of 
hydrophobia, dogs were slaughtered wholesale, and their bodies 
literally blocked up the streets. " The dear, good-natured, honest, 
" sensible creatures!" exclaimed Horace Walpole. "Christ! 
"How can anybody hurt them V But what Horace said only to 
his friend, Goldsmith said to everybody : publicly denouncing the 
cruelty, in a series of witty stories ridiculing the motives alleged 
for it, and pleading with eloquent warmth for the honest associate 
of man. Nor was this the only mad-dog-cry of the year. The 
yell of a Grub-street mob as fierce, on a false report of the death 
of Voltaire, brought Goldsmith as warmly to the rescue. With 
eager admiration, he asserted the claims of the philosopher and 
wit ; told the world it was its lusts of war and sycophancy which 
unfitted it to receive such a friend ; set forth the independence of 
his life, in a country of Pompadours and an age of venal oppression ; 
declared (this was before the Calas family) the tenderness and 
humanity of his nature ; and claimed freedom of religious thought 
for him and all men. " I am not displeased with my brother 
"because he happens to ask our father for. favours in a different 



152 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book in. 

"manner from me." As we read the Chinese Letters with this 
comment of the time, those actual days come vividly back to us. 
Earl Ferrers glides through them again, with his horrible passion 
and yet more ghastly composure. The theatres again contend with 
their Pollys and Macheaths, and tire the town with perpetual 
Beggars' Operas. Merry and fashionable crowds repeople White 
Conduit and Vauxhall. We get occasional glimpses of even the 
stately commoner and his unstately ducal associate. Old George 
the Second dies, and young George the Third ascends the throne. 
Churchill makes his hit with the Bosciad ; and Sterne, having 
startled the town with the humour and extravagance of his Tristram 
Shandy, comes up from country quiet to enjoy popularity. 

How sudden and decisive it was, need not be related. No one 
was so talked of in London this year, and no one so admired, as 
that tall, thin, hectic-looking Yorkshire parson. He who was to 
die within eight years, unheeded and untended, in a common 
lodging-house, was everywhere the honoured guest of the rich and 
noble. His book had become a fashion, and east and west were 
moved alike. Mr. Dodsley offered him 6501. for a second edition 
and two more volumes ; Lord Falconberg gave him a curacy of 
15(K a-year ; Mr. Reynolds painted his portrait ; and Warburton, 
not having yet pronounced him an "irrecoverable scoundrel," went 
round to the bishops and told them he was the English Rabelais. 
" They had never heard of such a writer," adds the sly narrator of 
the incident. " One is invited to dinner where he dines," said 
Gray, " a fortnight beforehand : " and he was boasting, himself, of 
dinner engagements fourteen deep, even while he declared the 
way to fame to be like that to heaven, through much tribulation, 
and described himself, in the midst of his triumphs, " attacked and 
'' pelted from cellar and garret. " Perhaps he referred to Goldsmith, 
from whose garret in Green Arbour-court the first heavy blow was 
levelled at him ; but there were other assailants, as active though 
less avowed, in cellars of Arlington-street and garrets of Strawberry- 
hill. Walpole may yet more easily be forgiven than Goldsmith in 
such a case. The attack in the Citizen of the World was aimed, it 
is true, where the work was most vulnerable ; and it was not ill 
done to protest against the indecency and affectation, which doubt- 
less had largely contributed to the so sudden popularity, as they 
found promptest imitators : but the humour and wit ought surely 
to have been admitted ; and if the wisdom and charity of an uncle 
Toby, a Mr. Shandy, or a corporal Trim, might anywhere have 
claimed frank and immediate recognition, it should have been in 
that series of essays which Beau Tibbs and the Man in Black have 
helped to make immortal. 

Most charming are these two characters. Addison would have 



chap, iv.] THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD. 153 

admired, and Steele delighted in them. Finery and poverty, 
surliness and good -nature, were never brought together with more 
playful wit, or a more tender sweetness. Fielding's majestic 
major, who will hear of nothing less than the honour and dignity 
of a man, and is caught in an old woman's bedgown warming his 
sick sister's posset, is not a nobler specimen of manhood than the 
one ; Steele's friend at the trumpet club, that very insignificant 
fellow but exceeding gracious, who has but a bare subsistence yet 
is always promising to introduce you into the world, who answers 
to matters of no consequence with great circumspection, maintains 
an insolent benevolence to all whom he has to do with, and will 
desire one of ten times his substance to let him see him some- 
times, hinting that he does not forget him, is not more delicious in 
his vanity than the other. The country ramble of the Man in 
Black, wherein, to accompaniment of the most angry invective, he 
performs acts of the most exquisite charity ; where with harsh loud 
voice he denounces the poor, while with wistful compassionate face 
he relieves them ; where, by way of detecting imposture, he 
domineeringly buys a shilling's worth of matches, receives the 
astonished beggar's whole bundle and blessing, and, intimating 
that he has taken in the seller and shall make money of his bargain, 
bestows them next moment on a tramper with an objurgation ; is 
surely never to be read unmoved. For Beau Tibbs, who has not 
laughed at and loved him, from the first sorry glimpse of his faded 
finery? Who has not felt, in the airs of wealth and grandeur 
with which his amusing impudence puffs up his miserable poverty, 
that he makes out a title to good-natured cheerfulness and 
thorough enjoyment, which all the real wealth might have 
purchased cheaply ? What would his friends Lords Muddler and 
Crump, the Duchess of Piccadilly or the Countess of Allnight, have 
given for it 1 Gladly, for but a tithe of it, might the lords have 
put up with his two shirts, and uncomplainingly the ladies assisted 
Mrs. Tibbs, and her sweet pretty daughter Carolina Wilhelmina 
Amelia, in seeing them through the wash-tub. It is an elegant 
little dinner he talks of giving his fiiend, with bumpers of wine, a 
turbot, an ortolan, and what not : but who would not as soon 
have had the smart bottled-beer which was all he had to give, 
with the nice pretty bit of ox-cheek, piping-hot, and dressed with 
a little of Mrs. Tibbs's own sauce which "his grace" was so fond 
of 1 It is supposed that this exquisite sketch had a living original 
in one of Goldsmith's casual acquaintance ; a person named 
Thornton, once in the army. 

This is not improbable, any more than that the beau's two shirts 
might have been copied from Goldsmith's own ; for everywhere 
throughout the Letters actual incidents appear, and the " fairy 

H3 



154. OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

"tale" of the prince and the white mouse had an origin whimsical 
as the story itself. Mr. Newbery's two guineas a-week would 
seem to have attracted weekly levies, in a double sense, from 
Grub-street (when was there ever a good-natured Irishman with 
five shillings in his pocket, and any lack of Irish hangers-on to 
share the spoil ?), at which Pilkington, son of the notorious 
Lsetitia, was most assiduous. But with other than his usual 
begging aspect, . he appeared in Green Arbour-court one day ; for 
good luck had dawned on him at last, he said, and his troubles 
were over. A very small sum (and he ran about the room for joy 
of the announcement) was all he wanted to make his fortune. 
There was a great duchess who had the most surprising passion for 
white mice ; two she had procured already, and for years had been 
looking out for two more, which she was ready to offer the most 
extravagant price for. Aware of her grace's weakness, he had 
long ago implored of a friend going out to India to procure him, if 
possible, two white mice, and here they were actually arrived ; 
they were in the river at that moment, having come by an India- 
man, now in the docks ; and the small sum, to which allusion had 
been made, was all that now stood between Jack Pilkington and 
independence for life ! Yes ; all he wanted was two guineas, to I 
buy a cage for the creatures sufficiently handsome to be received J 
by a duchess. But what was to be done, for Goldsmith had only 
half a guinea ? The anxious client then pointed to a watch, with 
which his poor patron (indulging in a luxury which Johnson did 
not possess till he was sixty) had lately enriched himself ; deferen- 
tially suggested one week's loan as a solution of the difficulty ; 
and carried it off. And though Goldsmith never again had 
tidings of either, or of the curious white mice, till a paragraph in 
the Public Ledger informed him of certain equivocal modes 
whereby " Mr. P — Ik — g — on was endeavouring to raise money," 
— yet a messenger, not long afterwards, carried to the poor 
starving creature's death-bed "a guinea from Mr. Goldsmith." 

The same journal (by the favour of an old friend, Kenrick) 
described for the public at the same time an amusing adventure in 
White-conduit gardens, of which no other than " Mr. G — d — th" 
himself was the hero. Strolling through that scene of humble 
holiday, he seems to have met the wife and two daughters of an 
honest tradesman who had done him some service, and invited, 
them to tea ; but after much enjoyment of the innocent repast, he 
discovered a want of money to discharge the bill, and had to 
undergo some ludicrous annoyances, and entertain his friends at 
other expense than he had bargained for, before means were found 
for his release. Another contemporary anecdote reverses this 
picture a little, and exhibits him reluctant paymaster, at the 






chap, iv.] THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD. 155 

Chapter-coffee-house, for Churchill's friend Charles Lloyd, who in 
his careless way, without a shilling to pay for the entertainment, 
invited him to sup with some friends of Grub-street and left him 
to pay the reckoning. A third incident of the same date presents 
him with a similar party at Blackwall, where so violent a dispute 
arose about Tristram Shandy at the dinner-table, that personalities 
led to blows, and the feast ended in a fight. " Why, sir," said 
Johnson laughing, when Boswell told him some years later of a 
different kind of fracas in which their friend had been engaged, 
" I believe it is the first time he has heat ; he may have been 
r beaten before. This, sir, is a new plume to him." If the some- 
what doubtful surmise of the beating be correct, the scene of it 
was Blackwall ; and if (a surmise still more doubtful) the story 
Hawkins tells about the trick played off by Roubiliac, which like 
all such tricks tells against both the parties to it, be also true, this 
was the time when it happened. The "little" sculptor, as he is 
called in the Chinese Letters, being a familiar acquaintance, and 
fond of music, Goldsmith would play the flute for him ; and to 
such assumed delight on the part of his listener did he do this one 
day, that Roubiliac, protesting he must copy the air upon the 
spot, took up a sheet of paper, scored a few lines and spaces (the 
form of the notes being all he knew of the matter), and with 
random blotches pretended to take down the time as repeated by 
the good-natured musician ; while gravely, and with great atten- 
tion, Goldsmith, surveying these musical hieroglyphics, ' ' said they 
" were very correct, and that if he had not seen him do it, he 
" never could have believed his friend capable of writing music 
"after him." Sir John Hawkins tells the story with much satis- 
faction. Exposure of an ignorant flute-player, with nothing but 
vulgar accomplishments of "ear" to bestow upon his friends, yet 
with an innocent conceit of pretending to the science of music, 
gives great delight to pompous Hawkins, as a learned historian of 
crotchets and quavers. It seems more than probable, notwith- 
standing, that there is not a syllable of truth in the story, for the 
writer of an address " to the Philological Society of London " on 
Sir John Hawkins's Life of Johnson, published in May 1787, tells 
us that he was "acquainted with a gentleman who knew 
" Goldsmith well, and has often requested him to play different 
"pieces from music which he laid before him; and this, 
" Goldsmith has done with accuracy and precision, while the 
" gentleman, who is himself musical, looked over him : a 
" circumstance utterly impossible, if we admit the foolish story 
"related by Sir John." 

So passed the thoughtless life of Goldsmith in his first year of 
success ; if so may be called the scanty pittance which served to 



156 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book in. 

expose Ms foibles but not to protect him from their consequence. 
So may his life be read in these letters to the Public Ledger ; and 
still with the comment of pleasure and instruction for others, though 
at the cost of suffering to himself. His habits as well as thoughts 
are in them. He is at the theatre, enjoying Garrick's Abel Drugger 
and laughing at all who call it "low ;" a little tired of Polly and 
Macheath ; not at all interested by the famous and fortunate 
tumbler, who, between the acts of tragedies as well as farces, 
balances a straw upon his nose ; and zig-zagging his way home 
after all is over, through a hundred obstacles from coach- wheels 
and palanquin-poles, " like a bird in its flight through the branches 
"of a forest." He is a visitor at the humble pot-house clubs, 
whose follies and enjoyments he moralises with touching pleasantry. 
" Were I to be angry at men for being fools, I could here have 
" found ample room for declamation : but, alas ! I have been a 
" fool myself, and why should I be angry with them for being 
" something so natural to every child of humanity." Unsparing 
historian of this folly of his own, he conceals his imprudence as 
little as his poverty ; and his kind heart he has not the choice to 
conceal. Everywhere it betrays itself. In hours of depression, 
recalling the disastrous fate of men of genius, and " mighty poets 
" in their misery dead ; " in imaginary interviews with booksellers, 
laughing at their sordid mistakes ; in remonstrances with his own 
class, warning them of the danger of despising each other ; and in 
rarer periods of perfect self-reliance, rising to a lofty superiority 
above the temporary accidents around him, asserting the power 
and claims of men of letters, and denouncing the short-sightedness 
of statesmen. " Instead of complaining that writers are over- 
paid, when their works procure them a bare subsistence, I 
' ' should imagine it the duty of a state, not only to encourage 
"their numbers but their industry." At the close of the same 
paper he rises into a pathetic eloquence while pleading for those 
who in that character have served and instructed England : "to 
1 ' such I would give my heart, since to them I am indebted for its 
" humanity ! " And in another letter the subject is more calmly 
resumed, with frank admission that old wrongs are at length in 
the course of coming right. "At present, the few poets of 
" England no longer depend on the great for subsistence ; they have 
" now no other patrons but the public, and the public, collectively 
" considered, is a good and a" generous master. It is, indeed, too 
"frequently mistaken as to the merits of every candidate for 
' ' favour ; but to make amends, it is never mistaken long. ... A 
"man of letters at present, whose works are valuable, is perfectly 
" sensible of their value. Every polite member of the community, 
"by buying what he writes, contributes to reward him. The 



chap, iv.] THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD. 157 

" ridicule, therefore, of living in a garret, might have been wit 
"in the last age, but continues such no longer, because no 
"longer true." 

The quiet composure of this passage exhibits the healthiest 
aspect of his mind. Bookseller and public are confronted calmly, 
and the consequences fairly challenged. It is indeed very obvious, 
at the close of this first year of the Public Ledger, that increasing 
opportunities of employment (to say nothing of the constant 
robbery of his writings by pirate magazine-men) were really 
teaching him his value, and suggesting hopes he had not earlier 
dared to entertain. He resumed his connection with the Lady's 
Magazine, and became its editor : publishing in it, among other 
writings known and unknown, what he had written of his Life of 
Voltaire ; and retiring from its editorship at the close of a year, 
when he had raised its circulation (if Mr. Wilkie's advertisements 
are to be believed) to three thousand three hundred. He con- 
tinued his contributions, meanwhile, to the British Magazine ; 
from which he was not wholly separated till two months before 
poor Smollett, pining for the loss of his only daughter, went upon 
the continent (in 1763) never to return to a fixed or settled 
residence in London. He furnished other booksellers with 
occasional compilation-prefaces ; he compiled for Newbery, in 
four duodecimo volumes, A Poetical Dictionary, or the Beauties of 
the English Poets alphabetically displayed (now a very rare book, 
but with a preface which pleasantly reveals his hand) ; and he 
gave some papers (among them a Life of Christ and Lives of the 
Fathers, re-published with his name, in shilling pamphlets, a few 
months after his death) to a so-called Christian Magazine, under- 
taken by Newbery in connection with the macaroni parson Dodd, 
and conducted by that villainous pretender as an organ of fashion- 
able divinity. 

It seems to follow as of course upon these engagements, that 
the room in Green Arbour-court should at last be exchanged for 
one of greater comfort. He had left that place in the later months 
of 1760, and gone into what were called respectable lodgings in 
Wine Office-court, Fleet-street. The house belonged to a relative 
of ISTewbery's, and he occupied two rooms in it for nearly two 
years. 



158 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 



CHAPTEE V. 



FELLOWSHIP WITH JOHNSON. 1761—1762. 

A circumstance occurred in the new abode of which Goldsmith 
had now taken possession in "Wine Office-court, which 
jn+ 03 must have endeared it always to his remembrance ; but 
more deeply associated with the wretched habitation he 
had left behind him in Green Arbour-court, were days of a most 
forlorn misery as well as of a manly resolution, and, round that 
beggarly dwelling (" the shades," as he used to call it in the more 
prosperous aftertime), and all connected with it, there crowded to 
the last the kindest memories of his gentle and true nature. 
Thus, when bookseller Davies tells us, after his death, how 
tender and compassionate he was ; how no unhappy person ever 
sued to him for relief, without obtaining it, if he had anything to 
give ; and how he would borrow, rather than not relieve the 
distressed, — he adds that " the poor woman with whom he had 
" lodged during his obscurity, several years in Green Arbour- 
" court, by his death lost an excellent friend ; for the Doctor 
" often supplied her with food from his own table, and visited her 
"frequently, with the sole purpose to be kind to her." As little, 
in connection with Wine Office-court, was he ever likely to forget 
that Johnson now first visited him there. 

They had probably met before. I have shown how frequently 
the thoughts of Goldsmith vibrated to that great Grub-street figure 
of independence and manhood, which, in an age not remarkable for 
either, was undoubtedly presented in the person of the author of 
the English Dictionary. One of the last Chinese Letters had 
again alluded to the " Johnsons and Smolletts " as veritable poets, 
though they might never have made a verse in their whole lives ; 
and among the earliest greetings of the new essay- writer, I suspect 
that Johnson's would be found. The opinion expressed in his 
generous question of a few years later ("Is there a man, sir, now, 
" who can pen an essay with such ease and elegance as Gold- 
" smith ?") he was not the man to wait for the world to help him 
to. Himself connected with Newbery, and engaged in like occu- 
pation, the new adventurer wanted his helping word and would be 
therefore sure to have it ; nor, if it had not been a hearty one, 
is Mr. Percy likely to have busied himself to bring about the 
present meeting. It was arranged by that learned divine j and 



chap, v.] FELLOWSHIP WITH JOHNSON. 159 

this was the first, time, he says, he had seen them together. The 
day fixed was the 31st of May 1761, and Goldsmith gave a supper 
in Wine Office-court in honour of his visitor. 

Percy called to take up Johnson at Inner Temple-lane, and 
found him, to his great astonishment, in a marked condition of 
studied neatness ; without his rusty brown suit, or his soiled shirt, 
his loose knee-breeches, his unbuckled shoes, or his old little 
shrivelled unpowdered wig ; and not at all likely, as Miss Reynolds 
tells us his fashion in these days was, to be mistaken for a beggar- 
man. He had been seen in no such respectable garb since he 
appeared behind Garrick's scenes on the first of the nine nights 
of Irene, in a scarlet gold-laced waistcoat, and rich gold-laced hat. 
In fact, says Percy, "he had on a new suit of clothes, a new wig 
" nicely powdered, and everything about him so perfectly dissimilar 
" from his usual habits and appearance, that his companion could 
"not help enquiring the cause of this singular transformation. 
" 'Why, sir,' said Johnson, ' I hear that Goldsmith, who is a very 
" ' great sloven, justifies his disregard of cleanliness and decency 
" ' by quoting my practice ; and I am desirous this night to show 
" ' him a better example.' " The example was not lost, as extracts 
from tailors' bills will shortly show ; and the anecdote, which 
offers pleasant proof of the interest already felt by Johnson for 
his new acquaintance, is our only record connected with that 
memorable supper. It had no Boswell-historian, and is gone into 
oblivion ; but the friendship which dates from it will never 
pass away. 

Writing to Percy about that supper when arranging the memoir 
which bears his name, Doctor Campbell says, " The anecdote of 
"Johnson I had recollected, but had forgot that it was at Gold- 
" smith's you were to sup. The story of the Valet de Chambre 
" will, as Lord Bristol says, fill the basket of his absurdities ; and 
"really we may have a hamper full of them." Unfortunately the 
story of the Valet de Chambre has not emerged ; and to another 
anecdote, also unluckily lost, Campbell refers in a previous 
letter to Percy : ' ' One thing, however, I could wish, if it met 
6 ' your approbation, that I had before me some hints respecting 
"the affair of Goldsmith and Perrot : it may without giving 
"offence, be related; at least so as to embellish the work, by 
' i showing more of Goldsmith's character, which he himself has 
" fairly drawn : ' fond of enjoying the present, careless of the 
" ' future, his sentiments those of a man of sense, his actions those 
" ' of a fool ; of fortitude able to stand immoved at the bursting of 
" 'an earthquake, yet of sensibility to be affected by the breaking 
" ' of a tea-cup.' " To which, in a later letter, this is added : " Your 
" sketch of Sir Richard Perrot will come in as an episode towards 



160 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

"the conclusion, with good effect; but there, neither that nor 
"anything that can sully, shall appear as coming from you." So 
the Perrot anecdote is also lost, and the basket of absurdities by no 
means full ! 

" Farewell," says Milton, at the close of one of his early letters 
to his friend Gill, " and on Tuesday next expect me in London 
"among the booksellers." The booksellers were of little mark in 
Milton's days ; but the presence of such men among them began 
a social change important to both, and not ill expressed . in an 
incident of the days I am describing, when Horace Walpole met 
the wealthy representative of the profits of Paradise Lost at a. 
great party at the Speaker's, while Johnson was appealing to 
public charity for the last destitute descendant of Milton. But 
from the now existing compact between trade and letters, the 
popular element could not wholly be excluded ; and, to even the 
weariest drudge, hope was a part of it. From the loopholes of 
Paternoster-row, he could catch glimpses of the world. Churchill 
had emerged, and Sterne, for a few brief years ; and but that 
Johnson had sunk into idleness, he might have been reaping a 
harvest more continuous than theirs, and yet less dependent on 
the trade. Drudgery is not good, but flattery and falsehood are 
worse ; and it had become plain to Goldsmith, even since the days 
of the Enquiry , how much better it was for men of letters to live by 
the labour of their hands till more original labour became popular 
with trading patrons, than to wait with their hands across, as 
Johnson contemptuously described it, till great men came to feed 
them. Whatever the call that Newbery or any other bookseller 
made, then, he was there to answer it. He had the comfort of 
remembering that the patron had himself patrons ; that something 
of their higher influence had been attracted to his Chinese Letters ; 
and that he was not slaving altogether without hope. , 

His first undertaking in 1762 was a pamphlet on the Cock Lane 
Ghost, for which Newbery paid him three guineas : but 
wL c\ whether, with Johnson, he thought the impudent impos- 
ture worth grave enquiry ; or, with Hogarth, turned it to 
wise purposes of satire ; or only laughed at it, as Churchill did ; 
it is not quite certain that the pamphlet has survived to inform 
us. But if, as appears probable, a tract on the Mystery ReveaVd 
published by Newbery's neighbour, Bristow, be Goldsmith's three- 
guinea contribution, the last is the most correct surmise. It is 
however, a poor production. His next labour, which has been 
attributed to him on the authority of "several personal acquaint- 
" ances," was the revision of a History of Mechlenburgh from the 
first settlement of the Vandals in that country, which the settlement 
of the young Queen Charlotte in this country was expected to 



chap, v.] FELLOWSHIP WITH JOHNSON. 161 

make popular ; and for which, according to his ordinary rates of 
payment, he would have received 201. This may have been that 
first great advance "in a lump" which to his monied inexperience 
seemed a sum so enormous as to require the grandest schemes for 
disposing of it. For a subsequent payment of 101., he assisted 
Newbery with an Art of Poetry on a Nev) Plan, or in other words, 
j a compilation of poetical extracts ; and concurrently with this, 
Mr Newbery begged leave to offer to the young gentlemen and 
ladies of these kingdoms a Compendium of Biography, or a history 
of the lives of those great personages, both ancient and modern, 
who are most worthy of their esteem and imitation, and most likely 
to inspire their minds with a love of virtue ; for which offering to 
the juvenile mind, beginning with an abridgment of Plutarch, he 
was to pay Goldsmith at the rate of about eight pounds a volume. 
The volumes were brief, published monthly, and meant to have gone 
through many months if the scheme had thriven ; but it fell before 
Billy's British Plutarch, and perished with the seventh volume. 

Nor did it run without danger even this ignoble career. Illness 
fell upon the compiler in the middle of the fifth volume. "B r 
"Sir," he wrote to Newbery, "As I have been out of order for 
" some time past and am still not quite recovered, the fifth volume 
' ' of Plutarch's lives remains unfinished. I fear I shall not be able 
"to do it, unless there be an actual necessity and that none else 
" can be found. If therefore you would send it to Mr. Collier I 
"should esteem it a kindness, and will pay for whatever it may 
" come to. N. B. I received twelve guineas for the two Volumes. 
" I am, Sir, Your obliged humble serv*, Oliver Goldsmith. Pray 
"let me have an answer." The answer was not favourable. 
Twelve guineas had been advanced, the two volumes were due, 
and Mr. Collier, though an ingenious man, was not Mr. Goldsmith. 
" Sir," returned the latter coldly, on a scrap of paper unsealed, 
and sent evidently by hand, ' ' One Volume is done, namely the 
"fourth. When I said I should be glad Mr. Collier would do the 
" fifth for me, I only demanded it as a favour ; but if he cannot 
"conveniently do it, tho' I have kept my chamber these three 
" weeks and am not yet quite recovered, yet I will do it. I send 
" it per bearer, and if the affair puts you to the least inconvenience 
"return it, and it shall be done immediately. I am, &c. O. G. 
" The Printer has the Copy of the rest." To this, his good nature 
having returned, Newbery acceded ; and the book was finished by 
Mr. Collier, to whom a share of the pittance advanced had of 
course to be returned. 

These paltry advances are a hopeless entanglement. They bar 
freedom of judgment on anything proposed, and escape is felt to 
be impossible. Some days, some weeks perhaps, have been lost in 



162 OLIYER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

idleness or illness, and the future becomes a mortgage to the past ; 
every hour has its want forestalled upon the labour of the succeed- 
ing hour, and Gulliver lies bound in Lilliput. " Sir," said Johnson, 
who had excellent experience on this head, "you may escape a 
"heavy debt, but not a small one. Small debts are like small 
1 ' shot ; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped 
"without a wound. Great debts are like cannon, of loud noise 
"but little danger." 

Mention of Goldsmith's illness now frequently recurs. It 
originated in the habits of his London life, contrasting with the 
activity and movement they had replaced ; and the remedy 
prescribed was change of scene, if change of life was impossible. 
He is to be traced in this year to Tunbridge and Bath ; at the 
latter place he seems to have been a frequent visitor, and I find 
him known to Mr. Wood, whose solid and tasteful architecture 
was then ennobling the city ; and one of Mr. Newbery's pithy 
acknowledgments is connected with those brief residences, where 
the invprobus labor had not failed to follow him. " Receiv'd from 
"Mr. Newbery at different times and for which I gave receipts 
c ' fourteen guineas which is in full for the Copy of the life of Mr. 
"Nash. Oliver Goldsmith." The recent death of the celebrated 
Beau had suggested a subject, which, with incidents in its comedy 
of manners that recommended it to a man of wit in our own day, 
had some to recommend it to Goldsmith. The king of fashion had 
at least the oddity of a hero ; and sufficient harmlessness, not to 
say usefulness, to make him original among heroes and kings. It 
is a clever book ; and as one examines the original edition with its 
234 goodly pages, still not uncommon on the book-stalls, it appears 
quite a surprising performance for fourteen guineas. No name 
was on the title page ; but the writer, whose powers were so various 
and performance so felicitous "that he always seemed to do best 
"that which he was doing," finds it difficult not to reveal his 
name. The preface was discerningly written. That a man who 
had diffused society and made manners more cheerful and refined, 
should have claims to attention from his own age, while his pains 
in pursuing pleasure, and his solemnity in adjusting trifles, were a 
claim to even a smile from posterity, was so set forth as to reassure 
the stateliest reader ; and if somewhat thrown back by the 
biographer's bolder announcement in the opening of his book, that 
a page of Montaigne or Colley Cibber was worth more than the 
most grandiose memoirs of "immortal statesmen already forgotten," 
he had but to remember after how many years of uninterrupted 
power the old Duke of Newcastle had just resigned, to think that 
as grave a lesson might really await him in the reign of an old 
minister of fashion. 






chap, v.] FELLOWSHIP WITH JOHNSON. 163 

In truth the book is neither imi instructive nor unamnsing ; and 
it is difficult not to connect some points of the biographer's own 
history with its oddly mixed anecdotes of silliness and shrewdness, 
taste and tawdriness, blossom-coloured coats and gambling debts, 
vanity, carelessness, and good-heartedness. The latter quality in 
its hero was foiled by a want of prudence, which deprived it of half 
its value : and the extenuation is so frequently and so earnestly 
set forth in connexion with the fault, as, with what we now know of 
the writer, to convey a sort of uneasy personal reference. Remem- 
bering, indeed, that what we know now was not only unknown 
then, but even waiting for what remained of Goldsmith's life to 
develop and call it forth, this Life of Beau Nash is in some 
respects a curious, and was probably an unconscious, revelation of 
character. As yet restricted in his wardrobe, and unknown to the 
sartorial books of Mr. William Filby, he gravely discusses the 
mechanical and moral influence of dress, in the exaction of respect 
and esteem. Quite ignorant, as yet, of his own position among 
the remarkable men of his time, he dwells strongly on that class of 
impulsive virtues, which, in a man otherwise distinguished, are 
more adapted to win friends than admirers, and more capable of 
raising love than esteem. A stranger still to the London whist 
table, even to the moderate extent in which he subsequently 
sought its excitement and relief, he sets forth with singular pains 
the temptation of a man who has "led a life of expedients and 
"thanked chance for his support," to become a stranger to pru- 
dence, and fly back to chance for those " vicissitudes of rapture 
"and anguish" in which his character had been formed. With 
light and shade that might seem of any choosing but his, he 
exhibits the moral qualities of Nash, as of one whose virtues, in 
almost every instance, received some tincture from the follies most 
nearly neighbouring them ; who, though very poor, was very fine, 
and spread out the little gold he had as thinly and far as it would 
go, but whose poverty was the more to be regretted, that it denied 
him the indidgence not only of his favourite follies, but of his 
favourite virtues ; who had pity for every creature's distress, but 
wanted prudence in the application of his benefits, and in whom 
this ill- controlled sensibility was so strong, that, unable to witness 
the misfortunes of the miserable, he was always borrowing money 
to relieve them ; who had, notwithstanding, done a thousand good 
things, and whose greatest vice was vanity. The self-painted 
picture will appear more striking as this narrative proceeds ; and 
it would seem to have the same sort of unconscious relation to the 
future, that one of Nash's friends is mentioned in the book to 
have gone by the name of The Good-natured Man. Nor should I 
omit the casual evidence of acquaintanceship between its hero and 



164 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

his biographer that occurs in a lively notice of the three periods of 
amatory usage which the beau's long life had witnessed, and in 
which not only had flaxen bobs been succeeded by majors, and 
negligents been routed by bags and ramilies, but the modes of 
making love had varied as much as the periwigs. " The only way 
"to make love now, I have heard Mr. Nash say, was to take no 
" manner of notice of the lady." 

Johnson's purchase of this book, which is charged to him in one 
of Newbery's accounts, shows his interest in whatever affected 
Goldsmith at this opening of their friendship. His book-purchases 
were never abundant ; though better able to afford them now than 
at any previous time, for the May of this year had seen a change 
in his fortunes. Bute's pensions to the Scottish crew showing 
meaner than ever in Churchill's daring verse, it occurred to the 
shrewd and wary Wedderburne (whose sister had married the 
favourite's most intimate friend) to advise, for a set-off, that 
Samuel Johnson should be pensioned. Of all the wits at the 
Grecian or the Bedford, Arthur Murphy, who had been some 
months fighting the North Briton with the Auditor, and was now 
watching the Courts at Westminster preparatory to his first circuit 
in the following year, was best known to Bute's rising lawyer ; 
and Arthur was sent to Johnson. It was an "abode of wretched- 
"ness," said this messenger of glad tidings, describing on his 
return those rooms of Inner Temple- lane where a visitor of some 
months before had found the author of the Bambler and RaZselas, 
now fifty- three years old, without pen, ink, or paper, " in poverty, 
"total idleness, and the pride of literature." Yet, great as was 
the poverty and glad the tidings, a shade passed over Johnson's 
face. After a long pause, "he asked if it was seriously intended." 
Undoubtedly. His majesty, to reward literary merit, and with no 
desire that the author of the English Dictionary should " dip his 
"pen in faction" (these were Bute's own words), had signified 
through the premier his pleasure to grant to Samuel Johnson 
three hundred pounds a year. ' ' He fell into a profound medita- 
"tion, and his own definition of a pensioner occurred to him." 
He was told that "he, at least, did not come within the defini- 
" tion ;" but it was not till after dinner with Murphy at the Mitre 
on the following day, that he consented to wait on Bute and 
accept the proffered bounty. To be pensioned with the fraudulent 
and contemptible Shebbeare, so lately pilloried for a Jacobite libel 
on the revolution of '88 ; to find himself in the same Bute-list 
with a Scotch court-architect, with a Scotch court-painter, with 
the infamous David Mallet, and with Johnny Home, must have 
chafed Sam Johnson's pride a little ; and when, in a few more 
months, as author of another English Dictionary, old Sheridan the 



chap. vi. 1 INTRODUCTIONS AT TOM DAVIES'S. 165 

actor received two hundred a year (because his theatre had suffered 
in the Dublin riots, pleaded Wedderburne ; because he had gone 
to Edinburgh to teach Bute's friend to talk English, said Wilkes), 
it had become very plain to him that Lord Bute knew nothing of 
literature. But he had compromised no independence in the 
course he took, and might afford to laugh at the outcry which 
followed. "I wish my pension were twice as large, sir," he said 
afterwards at Davies's, "that they might make twice as much 
"noise." 

But Davies was now grown into so much importance, and his 
shop was a place so often memorable for the persons who met 
there, that more must be said of both in a new chapter. 



CHAPTEE VI. 



INTRODUCTIONS AT TOM DAVIES'S. 1762. 

Thomas Davies, ex-performer of Drury-lane, and publisher and 
bookseller of Russell-street, Covent Garden, had now (with 
his "very pretty wife") left the stage and taken wholly ^,, „'a 
to bookselling, which he had recently, and for the second 
time, attempted to combine with acting. The Bosciad put a final 
extinguisher on his theatrical existence. He never afterwards 
mouthed a sentence in one of the kingly and heavy parts he was 
in the habit of playing, that Churchill's image of cur and bone did 
not confuse the sentence which followed ; his eye never fell upon 
any prominent figure in the front row of the pit, that he did not 
tremble to fancy it the brawny person of Churchill. What he 
thus lost in self-possession, Garrick meanwhile lost in temper ; 
and matters came to a breach, in which Johnson, being appealed 
to, took part against Garrick, as he was seldom disinclined to do. 
Pretty Mrs. Davies may have helped his inclination here ; for 
when seized with his old moody abstraction, as was not unusual, 
in the bookseller's parlour, and he began to blow, and too-too, and 
mutter prayers to be delivered from temptation, Davies would 
whisper his wife with waggish humour, " You, my dear, are the 
" cause of this." But be the cause what it might, the pompous 
little bibliopole never afterwards lost favour ; and it became as 
natural for men interested in Johnson, or those who clustered round 
him, to repair to Davies's the bookseller in Russell-street, as for 
any who wanted to hear of George Selwyn, Lord March, or Lord 
Carlisle, to call at Betty's the fruiterer in St. James' s-street. 



166 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book irr. 

A frequent visitor was Goldsmith ; his thick, short, clumsy- 
figure, and his awkward though genial manners, oddly contrasting 
with Mr. Percy's, precise, reserved, and stately. The high-bred 
and courtly Beauclerc might deign to saunter in. Often would be 
seen there, the broad fat face of Foote, with wicked humour 
flashing from the eye ; and sometimes the mild long face of 
Bennet Langton, filled with humanity and gentleness. There, too, 
had Goldsmith met a rarer visitor, the bland and gracious Reynolds, 
soon after his first introduction to him, a few months back, in 
Johnson's chambers ; and there would even Warburton drive on 
some proud business of his own, in his equipage "besprinkled 
" with mitres," after calling on Garrick in Southampton-street. For 
Garrick himself, it was perhaps the only place of meeting he cared 
to avoid, in that neighbourhood which had so profited and been 
gladdened by his genius ; in which his name was oftener resounded 
than that of any other human being ; and throughout which, 
we are told, there was a fondness for him, that, as his sprightly 
figure passed along, "darted electrically from shop to shop." 
What the great actor said some years later, indeed, he already 
seems to have fancied: that "he believed most authors who 
"frequented Mr. Davies's shop met merely to abuse him." 
Encouraged, meanwhile, by the authors, Davies grew in amusing 
importance ; set up for quite a patron of the players ; affected the 
insides as well outsides of books ; became a critic, pronounced 
upon plays and actors, and discussed themes of scholarship ; 
inflicted upon everyone his experiences of the Edinburgh univer- 
sity, which he had attended as a youth ; and when George Steevens 
called one day to buy the Oxford Homer, which he had seen 
tossing about upon his shelves, he was told by the modest bookseller 
that he had but one, and kept it for his own reading. 

Poor Goldsmith's pretensions, as yet, were small in the scale of 
such conceit : he being but the best of the essay writers, not the 
less bound on that account to unrepining drudgery, somewhat 
awkward in his manners, and laughed at for a careless simplicity. - 
Such was the character he was first seen in here, and he found its 
impressions always oddly mingled with whatever respect or 
consideration he challenged in later life. Only Johnson saw into 
that life as yet, or could measure what the past had been to him ; 
and few so well as Goldsmith had reason to know the great heart 
which beat so gently under those harsh manners. The friendship 
of Johnson was his first relish of fame ; he repaid it with affection 
and deference of no ordinary kind ; and so commonly were they 
seen together, now that Johnson's change of fortune brought him 
more into the world, that when a puppet-caricature of the Idler 
was threatened this summer by the Ha)anarket Aristophanes, the 



chap, vi.] INTRODUCTIONS AT TOM DAVIES'S. 167 

Citizen of the World was to be a puppet to. " What is the 
coramon price of an oak stick, sir ?" asked Johnson, when he 
heard of it. ''Sixpence," answered Davies. "Why then, sir, 
p give me leave to send your servant to purchase me a shilling 
i one. I'll have a double quantity ; for I am told Foote means 
"to take me off, as he calls it, and I am determined the fellow 
I "shall not do it with impunity." The Orators came out without 
the attraction promised ; attacking, instead, a celebrated Dublin 
printer, George Faulkner, who consoled himself (pending his 
prosecution of the libeller) by pirating the libel and selling it most 
extensively ; while the satirist had the more doubtful consolation 
of reflecting, thiee years later, that his taking off of Faulkner's 
one leg would have been much more perfect, could he have waited 
till the surgeon had taken off his own. This was the first dramatic 
piece, I may add, in which actors were stationed among the 
audience, and spoke from the public boxes. 

It had been suggested by a debating society called the Robin 
Hood, somewhat famous in those days, which used to meet near 
Temple-bar ; witli which the connexion of Burke's earliest 
eloquence may serve to keep it famous still, since it had numbered 
among its members that eager Temple student, whose public life 
was now at last beginning with under-secretary Hamilton in 
Dublin ; and to which Goldsmith was introduced by Samuel 
Derrick, his acquaintance and countryman. Struck by the elo- 
quence and imposing aspect of the president, who sat in a large 
gilt chair, he thought nature had meant him for a lord chancellor. 
"~No, no," whispered Derrick, who knew him to be a wealthy 
baker from the city, " only for a master of the rolls." Goldsmith 
was not much of an orator ; Doctor Kippis remembered him 
making an attempt at a speech in the Society of Arts on one 
occasion, and obliged to sit down in confusion ; but, till Derrick 
went away to succeed Beau Nash at Bath, he seems to have 
continued his visits, and even spoken occasionally ; for he figures 
in a flattering account of the members published at about this 
time, as " a good orator and candid disputant, with a clear head 
"and an honest heart, though coming but seldom to the society." 
The honest heart certainly was worn upon his sleeve, whatever his 
society might be. He could not even visit the three Cherokees, 
whom all the world were at this time visiting, without leaving the 
savage chiefs a trace of it. He gave them some " trifle" they did 
not look for ; and so did the gift, or the manner of it, please them, 
that with a sudden embrace they covered his cheeks with the oil 
and ochre that plentifully bedaubed their own, and left him to 
discover, by the laughter which greeted him in the street, the 
extent and fervour of their gratitude. 



168 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

Not always such ready recipients, however, did Goldsmith find 
the objects of his always ready kindness. One of the members of 
this Robin Hood was Peter Annet, a man, who, though ingenious 
and deserving in other respects, became unhappily notorious by a 
kind of fanatic crusade against the Bible, for which (publishing 
weekly papers against the Book of Genesis) he stood twice this 
year in the pillory, and was now undergoing imprisonment in the 
King's Bench. To Annet's rooms in St. George's-fields we trace 
Goldsmith. He had brought Newbery with him to conclude the 
purchase of a child's book on grammar by the prisoner, hoping so 
to relieve his distress ; but, on the prudent bookseller objecting to 
a publication of the author's name, Annet accused him of cowar- 
dice, rejected his assistance with contempt, and in a furious rage 
bade him and his introducer good evening. Yet the amount of 
Newbery's intended assistance was so liberal as to have startled 
both Goldsmith and Annet, no less a sum than ten guineas being 
offered for the child's grammar, though for the "completion of a 
" history of England" he had just given Goldsmith himself only 
two guineas. "Which latter munificent payment was exactly 
contemporaneous with the completion of another kind of history, 
on more expensive terms, by paymaster Henry Fox ; from whom 
twenty-five thousand pounds had gone in one morning, at the formal 
rate of 2001. a vote, to patriotic voters for the Peace. 

There is reason to believe (from another of the bookseller's 
memoranda) that the two guineas was for " seventy-nine leaves " 
of addition to a school-history, comprising the reign of George the 
Second, and paid at the rate of eight shillings a sheet. This 
payment, with what has before been mentioned, and an addition of 
five guineas for the assignment and republication of the Chinese 
Letters (to which Newbery, as we have seen, appears to have 
assented reluctantly, and only because Goldsmith would else have 
printed them on his own account), are all the profits of his 
drudgery which can be traced to him in the present year. He 
needed to have a cheerful disposition to bear him through ; nor, 
was nature chary to him now of that choicest of her gifts. He 
had some bow of promise shining through his dullest weather. It 
is supposed that he memorialised Lord Bute, soon after Johnson's 
pension, with the scheme we have seen him throw out hints of, 
in his review of Van Egmont's Asia ; and though Lord Dudley 
Stuart, who kindly examined all Lord Bute's papers for me, failed 
to find any trace of this memorial, nothing is more probable than 
that such a notion might have revived with him, on hearing 
Johnson's remark to Langton in connexion with his pension. 
"Had this happened twenty years ago, I should have gone to 
11 Constantinople to learn Arabic, as Pocock did." But what with 



ohaf. vi.] INTRODUCTIONS AT TOM DAYIES'S. 169 

Samuel Johnson might be a noble ambition, with little Goldy was 
but theme for a jest ; and nothing so raised the laugh against 
him, a few years later, as Johnson's notice of the old favourite 
project he was still at that time clinging to, that some time or 
other, " when his circumstances should be easier," he would like 
to go to Aleppo, and bring home such arts peculiar to the East as 
he might be able to find there. " Of all men Goldsmith is the 
" most unfit to go out upon such an inquiry ; for he is utterly 
" ignorant of such arts as we already possess, and consequently 
j ' could not know what would be accessories to our present stock 
" of mechanical knowledge. Sir, he would bring home a grinding 
p barrow, which you see in every street in London, and think that 
" he had furnished a wonderful improvement." 

But brighter than these visionary fancies were shining for him 
now. There is little doubt, from allusions which would most 
naturally have arisen at the close of the present year, that, in 
moments snatched from his thankless and ill-rewarded toil for 
Newbery, he was at last secretly indulging in a labour, which, 
whatever its effect might be upon his fortunes, was its own thanks 
and its own reward. He had begun the Vicar of Wakefield. 

1 Without encouragement or favour in its progress, and with little 
hope of welcome at the close of it ; earning meanwhile, apart from 
it, his bread for the day by a full day's labour at the desk ; it is 

I his " shame in crowds, his solitary pride " to seize and give shape 
to its fancies of happiness and home, before they pass for ever. 
Most affecting, yet also most cheering ! With everything before 
him in his hard life that the poet has placed at the Gates of Hell, 
he is content, for himself, to undergo the chances of them all, that 

I for others he may open the neighbouring Elysian Gate. Nor 
could the effort fail to bring strength of its own, and self-sustained 
resource. In all else he might be weak and helpless, dependant 
on others' judgment and doubtful of his own ; but there it was 

I not so. He took his own course in that. It was not for Mr. 

I Newbery he was writing then. Even the poetical fragments which 

i began in Switzerland are lying still in his desk untouched. They 

, are not to tell for so many pitiful items in the drudgery for 
existence. They are to " catch the heart, and strike for honest 

I "fame." 

He thought poorly, with exceptions already named in this 
narrative, of the poetry of the day. He regarded Churchill's 
astonishing success as a mere proof of the rage of faction ; and 
did not hesitate to call his satires lampoons, and his force 
turbulence. Fawkes and Woty were now compiling their Poetical 
Calendar, and through Johnson, who contributed, they asked if 
he would contribute : but he declined. Between himself and 



170 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

Fawkes, who was rector of a small Kentish village he had oc- 
casionally visited, civilities had passed ; but he shrunk from the 
poetical school of Fawkes and Woty, and did not hesitate to say 
so. He dined at the close of the year at Davies's, in company 
with Robert Dodsley, where the matter came into discussion. 
" This is not a poetical age," said Goldsmith ; "there is no poetry 
" produced in it." " Nay," returned Dodsley, " have you seen my 
" Collection ? You may not be able to find palaces in it, like 
: 'Dryden's Ode, but you have villages composed of very pretty 
" houses, such as the Spleen." Johnson was not present ; but 
when the conversation was afterwards reported to him by Boswell, 
lie remarked that Dodsley had said the same thing as Goldsmith, 
only in a softer manner. 

Another guest, besides Dodsley, was present at Davies's dinner- 
table that day. A youth of two-and-twenty, the son of a 
Scottish judge and respectable old whig laud, urged to enter the 
law but eager to bestow himself on the army, had come up at the 
end of the year from Edinburgh to see Johnson and the London 
wits, and not a little anxious that Johnson and the London wits 
should see him. Attending Sheridan's summer lectures in the 
northern city, he had heard wonderful things from the lecturer 
about the solemn and ponderous lexicographer, — what he said, and 
what he did, and how he would talk over his port wine and his 
tea until three or four o'clock in the morning. It was in the 
nature of this new admirer that port wine and late hours should 
throw a brighter halo over any object of his admiration ; and it 
was with desperate resolve to accomplish an introduction which he 
had tried and failed in two years before, that he was now again 
in London. But he had again been baffled. Johnson's sneer at 
Sheridan's pension having brought coolness between the old 
friends, that way there was no access ; and though Davies had 
arranged this dinner with the hope of getting his great friend to 
come, his great friend had found other matters to attend to. James 
Boswell was not yet to see Samuel Johnson. He saw only Oliver 
Goldsmith, and was doubtless much disappointed. 

Perhaps the feeling was mutual, if Oliver gave a thought to 
this new acquaintance; and strange enough the dinner must have 
been. As Goldsmibh discussed poetry with Dodsley, Davies, 
mouthing his words and rolling his head at Boswell, delighted 
that eager and social gentleman with imitations of Johnson ; 
while, as the bottle emptied itself more freely, sudden loquacity, 
conceited coxcombry, and officious airs of consequence, came as 
freely pouring forth from the youthful Scot. He had to tell them 
all he had seen in London, and all that had seen him. How 
Wilkes had said " how d'ye do " to him, and Churchill had shaken 



.en 



chap, vi.] . INTRODUCTIONS AT TOM DAYIES'S. 171 

hands with hirn, Scotchman though he was ; how he had been to 
the Bedford to see that comical fellow Foote, and heard him 
dashing away at everybody and everything (" Have you had good 
" success in Dublin, Mr. Foote ? " " Poh ! damn 'em ! There was 
" not a shilling in the country, except what the Duke of Bedford, 
" and I, and Mr. Rigby have brought away") ; how he had seen 
Garrick in the new farce of the Farmer's Return, and gone and 
I peeped over Hogarth's shoulder as he sketched little David in the 
Farmer • and how, above all, he had on another night attracted 
general attention and given prodigious entertainment in the Drury 
Lane pit, by extempore imitations of the lowing of a cow. " The 
" universal cry of the galleries," said he, gravely describing the 
incident some few years afterwards, ' ' was, encore the cow ! encore 
" the cow ! In the pride of my heart I attempted imitations 
" of some other animals, but with very inferior effect." A Scotch 
friend was 'with him, and gave sensible advice. " My dear sir," 
said Doctor Blair, earnestly, ' ' I would confine myself to the cow ! " 
or, as Walter Scott tells the anecdote in purer vernacular, 
" Stick to the cow, mon." Nor was the advice lost altogether : 
for Boswell stuck afterwards to his cow, in other words to what he 
could best achieve, pretty closely ; though Goldsmith, among 
! others, had no small reason to regret, that he should also, doing 
S the cow so well, still " with very inferior effect " attempt imita- 
tions of other animals. 

But little does Goldsmith or any other man suspect as yet, that 
within this wine-bibbing tavern babbler, this meddling, conceited, 
inquisitive, loquacious lion-hunter, this bloated and vain young 
Scot, lie qualities of reverence, real insight, quick observation, and 
| marvellous memory, which, strangely assorted as they are with 
; those other meaner habits, and parasitical self-complacent absur- 
dities, will one day connect his name eternally with the men of 
genius of his time, and enable him to influence posterity in its judg- 
I ments regarding them. They seem to have met occasionally before 
' Boswell returned to Edinburgh ; but only two of Goldsmith's 
j answers, to the other's perpetual and restless questionings, remain 
I to indicate the nature of their intercourse. There lived at this 
J time with Johnson, a strange, silent, grotesque companion, whom 
I he had supported for many years, and continued to keep with him 
j till death ; and Boswell could not possibly conceive what the 
claim of that insignificant Robert Levett could be, on the great 
I object of his own veneration. "He is poor and honest," was 
{ Goldsmith's answer, ' ' which is recommendation enough for John- 
I " son." Discovery of another object of the great man's charity, 
however, seemed difficult to be reconciled with this ; for here was 
a man of whom Mr. James Boswell had heard a very bad and 

I 2 



172 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. . [book in] 

shameful character, and, in almost the same breath, that Johnson 
had been kind to him also. " He is now become miserable," was 
Goldsmith's quiet explanation, " and that ensures the protection 
" of Johnson." 



CHAPTEE VII. 



HOGARTH AND REYNOLDS. 1762—1763. 

JSewbery's account-books and memoranda carry us, at the close 
of 1762, to a country" lodging in Islington, kept by a stout , 
™, <'. and elderly lady named Mrs. Elizabeth Fleming, and in- 
habited by Oliver Goldsmith. He is said to have moved 
here to be near Newbery, who had chambers at the time in Canon- 
bury-house or tower ; and that the publisher had looked out the 
lodgings for him, may be inferred from the fact that Mrs. Fleming 
was a friend of Mr. Newbery's, and, when he afterwards held the 
lease of Canonbury-house, seems to have rented or occupied part 
of it. But Goldsmith had doubtless also a stronger inducement in 
thus escaping, for weeks together, from the crowded noise of Wine 
Office-court (where he retained a lodging for town uses), to compara- 
tive quiet and healthy air. There were still green fields and lanes 
in Islington. Glimpses were discernible yet, even of the old time 
when the tower was Elizabeth's hunting seat, and the country all 
about was woodland. There were walks where houses were not ; 
neither terraces, nor taverns ; and where stolen hours might be 
given to precious thought, in the intervals of toilsome labom*. 

That he had come here with designs of labour, more constant 
and um^emitting than ever, new and closer arrangements with 
Newbery would seem to indicate. The publisher made himself, 
with certain prudent limitations, Mrs. Fleming's paymaster ; board 
and lodging were to be charged 50L a-year (the reader has to keep 
in mind that this would be now nearly double that amount), and, 
when the state of their accounts permitted it, to be paid each 
quarter by Mr. Newbery ; the publisher taking credit for these 
payments in his literary settlements with Goldsmith. The first 
quarterly payment had become due on the 24th of March, 1763 ; 
and on that day the landlady's claim of 121. 10s., made up to 14/. 
by " incidental expenses," was discharged by Newbery. It 
™, or stands as one item in an account of his cash advances for 
the first nine months of 1763, which characteristically ex-, 
hibits the relations of bookwriter and bookseller. Mrs. Fleming's 



chap, vii.] HOGARTH AND REYNOLDS. 173 

bills recur at their stated intervals ; and on the 8th of September 
there is a payment of 151. to William Filby the tailor. The 
highest advance in money is one (which is not repeated) of three 
guineas ; the rest vary, with intervals of a week or so between 
each, from two guineas to one guinea and half a guinea. The 
whole amount, from January to October 1763, is little more than 
961. ; upwards of 601. of which Goldsmith had meanwhile satisfied 
by " copies of different kinds," when on settlement day he gave 
his note for the balance. 

What these "copies" in every case were, it is not so easy to 
discover. From a list of books lent to him by Newbery, a com- 
pilation on popular philosophy appears to have been contemplated ; 
he was certainly engaged in the revision of what was meant to be 
a humorous recommendation of female government entitled Des- 
cription of Millenium Hall, as well as in making additions to four 
juvenile volumes of Wonders of Nature and Art ; and he had yet 
more to do with another book, the System of Natural History by 
Dr. Brookes (the author of the Gazetteer), which he thoroughly 
revised, and to which he not only contributed a graceful preface, 
but several introductions to the various sections, full of picturesque 
animation. He was to have received for this labour ' i eleven 
" guineas in full," but it was increased to nearly thirty. He had 
also some share in the Martial Review or General History of the 
late War, the profits of which JSTewbery (who published it, chapter 
by chapter, in a newspaper at Reading that belonged to him) 
had set apart for his luckless son-in-law, Kit Smart. In a memo- 
randum furnished by himself to the publisher, he claims three 
guineas for Preface to Universal History (a rival to the existing 
publication of that name, set on foot by Newbery and edited by 
Guthrie) ; two guineas for Preface to Rhetoric, and one for Preface 
to Chronicle, neither of these last now traceable ; three guineas for 
Critical and Monthly, presumed to be contributions to Newbery's 
magazines ; and twenty-one pounds on account of a History of 
England. A subsequent receipt acknowledges another twenty-one 
pounds " which with what I received before, is in full for the copy 
" of the History of England in a series of Letters, two volumes 
"in 12mo." 

This latter book, which was not published till the following 
year, claims a word of description. Such of the labours of 1763 
as had yet seen the light, were not of a kind to attract much notice. 
" Whenever I write anything," said Goldsmith, " 1 think the 
" public make a point to know nothing about it." So, remembering 
what Pope had said of the lucky lines that had a lord to own 
them, the present book was issued, doubtless with Newbery's glad 
concurrence, as a History of England in' a series of Letters from a 



174 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iil 

Nobleman to his Son. It had a great success in that character ; 
passed through many editions ; and was afterwards translated into 
French by the wife of Brissot, with notes by the revolutionary 
leader himself. The nobleman was supposed to be Lord Chester- 
field, so refined was the style ; Lord Orrery had also the credit of 
it ; but the persuasion at last became general that the author was 
Lord Lyttelton, and the name of that grave good lord is occasion- 
ally still seen affixed to it on the bookstalls. The mistake was never 
formally corrected : it being the bookseller's interest to continue 
it, and not less the author's as well, when in his own name he sub- 
sequently went over the same ground. But the authorship was not 
concealed from his friends ; copies of the second edition of the book 
were sent with his autograph to both Percy and Johnson ; and his 
friend Cooke tells us, not only that he had really written it in his 
lodgings at Islington, but how and in what way he did' so. In 
the morning, says this authority, he would study, in Eapin, Carte, 
Kennett's Complete History, and the recent volumes of Hume, as 
much of what related to the period on which he was engaged as he 
designed for one letter, putting down the passages referred to on a 
sheet of paper, with remarks. He then walked out with a com- 
panion, certain of his friends at this time being in the habit of 
constantly calling upon him ; and if, on returning to dinner, his 
friend returned with him, he spent the evening convivially, but 
without much drinking (" which he was never in the habit of") ; 
finally taking up with him to his bed-room the books and papers 
prepared in the morning, and there writing the chapter, or the 
best part of it, before he went to rest. This latter exercise cost 
him very little trouble, he said ; for, having all his materials 
ready, he wrote it with as much facility as a common letter. 

One may clearly trace these very moderate " convivialities," I 
think, in occasional entries of Mrs. Fleming's incidental expenses. 
The good lady was not loath to be generous at times, but is care- 
ful to give herself the full credit of it ; and a not infrequent item 
in her bill is " a gentleman's dinner, nothing." Four gentlemen 
have tea, for eighteen-pence ; " wine and cakes" are supplied for 
the same sum ; bottles of port are charged two sMlings each ; and 
such special favourites are " Mr. Baggott " and one "Doctor 
"Reman," that three elaborate cyphers (01. Os. Od.) follow their 
teas as well as their dinners. Redmond was the latter' s real 
name. He was a young Irish physician who had lived some years 
in France, and was now disputing with the Society of Arts on 
some alleged discoveries in the properties of antimony. Among 
Mrs. Fleming's anonymous entries, however, were some that must 
have related to more distinguished visitors. 

The greatest of these I would introduce as he was seen one day 



chap, til] HOGARTH AND REYNOLDS. 175 

in the present year by a young and eager admirer, passing quickly 
through Cranbourn-alley. He might haTe been on his way to 
Goldsmith. He was a bustling, actiTe, stout little man, dressed 
in a sky-blue coat. His admirer saw him at a distance, turning 
the comer ; and, running with all expedition to haTe a nearer 
Tiew, came up with him in Castle-street, as he stood patting one of 
two quarrelling boys on the back, and, looking steadfastly at the 
expression in the coward's face, was saying in Tery audible Toice, 
" Damn him, if I would take it of him ! at him again ! " Enemy 
or admirer could not under better circumstances haTe seen William 
Hogarth. He might see, in that little incident, his interest in 
homely life, his preference of the real in art, and his quick appre- 
hension of character ; his loTe of hard hitting, and his indomitable 
English spirit. The admirer, who, at the close of his own che- 
quered life, thus remembered and related it, was James Barry, of 
Cork ; who had followed Mr. Edmund Burke to London with 
letters from Doctor Sleigh, and whose birth, genius, and poTerty 
soon made him known to Goldsmith. 

Between Goldsmith and Hogarth existed many reasons for 
sympathy. Few so sure as the great, self-taught, philosophic 
artist, to penetrate at once, through any outer husk of disadvantage, 
to discernment of an honest and loTing soul. Genius, in both, 
took side with the homely and the poor ; and they had personal 
foibles in common. No man can be supposed to haTe read the 
letters in the Public Ledger with heartier agreement than Hogarth ; 
no man so little likely as Goldsmith to suffer a sky-blue coat, or 
conceited, strutting, consequential airs, to weigh against the claims 
of the painter of Marriage a-la-Mode. How they first met has 
not been related, but they met frequently. In these last two 
years of Hogarth's life, admiration had become precious to him ; 
and Goldsmith was ready with his tribute. Besides, there was 
Wilkes to rail against, and Churchill to condemn, as well as 
Johnson to praise and Iotc " I'll tell you what," would Hogarth 
say : " Sam Johnson's conTersation is to the talk of other men 
" like Titian's painting compared to Hudson's : but don't you tell 
"people, now, that I say so ; for the connoisseurs and I are at 
" war, you know ; and because I hate them, they think I hate 
" Titian— and let them ! » 

Goldsmith and the connoisseurs were at war, too ; and this 
would help to make more agreeable that frequent intercourse, of 
which Hogarth has himself left the only memorial. A portrait in 
oil representing an elderly lady in satin with an open book before 
her, known by the name of "Goldsmith's Hostess," and so ex- 
hibited in London in the 1832 collection of the works of deceased 
British artists, is the work of his pencil. It inTorres no great 



17G 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 



stretch of fancy to suppose it painted in the Islington lodgings, at 
some crisis of domestic pressure. JNTewbery's accounts reveal to 
us how often it was needful to mitigate Mrs. Fleming's impatience, 
to moderate her wrath, and, when money was not immediately at 
hand, to minister to her vanities. For Newbery was a strict 
accountant, and kept sharply within the terms of his bargains ( 
exacting notes of hand at each quarterly settlement for whatever 
the balance might be, and objecting to add to it by new payments 
when it happened to be large. It is but to imagine a visit from 
Hoo-arth at such time. If his good nature wanted any stimulus, 




the thought of Newbery would give it. He had himself an old 
grudge against the booksellers. He charges them in his autobio- 
graphy with ' ' cruel treatment " of his father, and dilates on the 
bitterness they add to the necessity of earning bread by the pen. But, 
though the copyrights of his prints were a source of certain and not 
inconsiderable income, his money at command was scanty ; and it 
would better suit his generous good-humour, as well as better serve 
his friend, to bring his easel in his coach some day, and enthrone Mrs. 
Fleming by the side of it. So may the portrait have been painted ; 
and much laughter there would be in its progress, I do not doubt, 
at the very different sort of sitters and subjects whose coroneted- 
coaches were crowding the west side of Leicester-square. 

The good-humour of Reynolds was a different thing from that 
of Hogarth. It had no antagonism about it. Ill-humour with 
any other part of the world had nothing to <lo with it. It was 



chap, vii.] HOGARTH AND REYNOLDS. 177 

gracious and diffused ; singling out some, it might be, for special 
warmth, but smiling blandly upon all. He was eminently the 
gentleman of his time ; and if there is a hidden charm in his 
portraits, it is that. His own nature pervades them, and shines 
out from them still. He was now forty years old, being younger 
than Hogarth by a quarter of a century ; was already in the 
receipt of nearly six thousand pounds a-year ; and had known 
nothing but uninterrupted prosperity. He had moved from St. 
Martm's-lane into Newport- street, and from Newport-street into 
Leicester-square ; he had raised his prices from five, ten, and twenty 
guineas (his earliest charge for the three sizes of portraits), suc- 
cessively to ten, twenty, and forty, to twelve, twenty-four, and 
forty-eight, to fifteen, thirty, and sixty, to twenty, forty, and 
eighty, and to twenty-five, fifty, and a hundred, the sums he now 
charged ; he had lately built a gallery for his works ; and he had 
set up a gay gilt coach, with the four seasons painted on its panels. 
Yet, of those to whom the man was really known, it may be 
doubted if there was one who grudged him a good fortune, which 
was worn with generosity and grace, and justified by noble 
qualities ; while few indeed should have been the exceptions, 
whether among those who knew or those who knew him not, to 
the feeling of pride that an Englishman had at last arisen, who 
could measure himself successfully with the Dutch and the Italian. 
This was what Reynolds had striven for ; and what common 
men might suppose to be his envy or self-sufficiency. Not with 
any sense of triumph over living competitors, did he listen to the 
praise he loved ; not of being better than Hogarth, or than Gains- 
borough, or than his old master Hudson, was he thinking con- 
tinually, but of the glory of being one day placed by the side of 
Vandyke and of Rubens. Undoubtedly he must be said to have 
overrated the effects of education, study, and the practice of 
schools ; and it is matter of much regret that he should never 
have thought of Hogarth but as a moral satirist and man of wit, 
or sought for his favourite art the dignity of a closer alliance with 
such philosophy and genius. But the difficult temper of Hogarth 
himself cannot be kept out of view. His very virtues had a 
stubbornness and a dogmatism that repelled. What Reynolds 
most desired, — to bring men of their common calling together, 
and, by consent and union, by study and co-operation, establish 
claims to respect and continuance, — Hogarth had been all his life 
opposing ; and was now, at the close of life, standing of his own 
free choice, apart and alone. Study the great works of the great 
masters for ever, said Reynolds : There is only one school, cried 
Hogarth, and that is kept by Nature. What was uttered on the one 
side of Leicester-square was pretty sure to be contradicted on the 

i3 



178 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

other ; and neither would make the advance which might have 
reconciled the views of both. Be it remembered, at the same 
time, that Hogarth, in the daring confidence of his more astonishing 
genius, kept himself at the farthest extreme. * ' Talk of sense, 
" and study, and all that," he said to Walpole, " why, it is owing 
' ' to the good sense of the English that they have not painted 
' ' better. The people who have studied painting least are the 
" best judges of it. There's Reynolds, who certainly has genius ; 
" why but t'other day he offered a hundred pounds for a picture 
" that I would not hang in my cellar." Reynolds might have some 
excuse if he turned from this with a smile, and a supposed confir- 
mation of his error that the critic was himself no painter. Thus 
these great men lived separate to the last. The only feeling they 
shared in common may have been that kindness to Oliver Gold- 
smith, which, after their respective fashion, each manifested well. 
The one, with his ready help and robust example, would have 
strengthened him for life, as for a solitary warfare which awaited 
every man of genius ; the other, more gently, would have drawn 
him from contests and solitude, from discontents and low esteem, 
to the sense that worldly consideration and social respect might 
gladden even literary toil. While Hogarth was propitiating and 
painting Mrs. Fleming, Reynolds was founding the Literary Club. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE CLUB AND ITS FIRST MEMBERS. 1763. 

The association of celebrated men of this period universally 
known as the Literary Club, did not receive that name till 
JEt 35. man y vears a ft er ^ was formed and founded ; but that 
' Reynolds was its Romulus (so Mrs. Thrale said Johnson 
called him), and this year of 1763 the year of its foundation, is 
unquestionable : though the meetings did not begin till winter. 
Johnson caught at the notion eagerly ; suggested as its model a 
club he had himself founded in Ivy-lane some fourteen years 
before, and which the deaths or dispersion of its members had now 
interrupted for nearly seven years ; and on this suggestion being 
adopted, the members, as in the earlier club, were limited to nine, 
and Mr. Hawkins, as an original member of the Ivy-lane, was 
invited to join. Tophani Beauclerc and Bennet Langton were also 
asked, and welcomed earnestly ; and, of course, Mr. Edmund 
Burke. He had lately left Dublin and politics for a time, and 



chap, vin.] THE CLUB AND ITS FIRST MEMBERS. 179 

returned to literature in Queen- Anne-street ; where a solid mark of 
his patron Hamilton's satisfaction had accompanied him, in the shape 
of a pension on the Irish Establishment of 3001. a year. Perhaps 
it was ominous of the mischances attending this pension, that it 
was entered in the name of " William Birt :" the name which was 
soon to be so famous, having little familiarity or fame as yet. The 
notion of the club delighted Burke ; and he asked admission for 
his father-in-law, Doctor Nugent, an accomplished Roman Catholic 
physician, who lived with him. Beauclerc in like manner 
suggested his friend Chamier, then secretary in the war-office. 
Oliver Goldsmith completed the number. But another member of 
the original Ivy-lane society, Samuel Dyer, making unexpected 
appearance from abroad in the following year, was joyfully 
admitted ; and though it was resolved to make election difficult, 
and only for special reasons permit addition to their number, the 
limitation at first proposed was thus of course done away with. A 
second limitation, however, to the number of twelve, was defi- 
nitively made on the occasion of the second balloting, and will be 
duly described. The place of meeting was the Turk's-head tavern 
in Gerrard-street Soho, where, the chair being taken every Monday 
night at seven o'clock by a member in rotation, all were expected 
to attend and sup together. In about the ninth year of their 
existence, they changed their day of meeting to Friday ; and, some 
years later (Percy and Malone say in 1775), in place of their 
weekly supper, they resolved to dine together once a fortnight 
during the meeting of parliament. Each member present was to 
bear his share of the reckoning : and conversation, from which 
politics only were excluded, was kept up always to a late hour. 

So originated and was formed that famous club, which had made 
itself a name in literary history long before it received, at Garrick's 
funeral, the name of the Literary Club by which it is now known. 
Its meetings were noised abroad ; the fame of its conversations 
received eager addition from the difficulty of obtaining admission 
to it ; and it came to be as generally understood that literature 
had fixed her social head-quarters here, as that politics reigned 
supreme at Wildman's or the Cocoa-tree. Not without advantage, 
let me add, to the dignity and worldly consideration of men of 
letters themselves. " I believe Mr. Fox will allow me to say," 
wrote the Bishop of St. Asaph to Mr. William Jones, when the society 
was not more than fifteen years old, " that the honour of being 
" elected into the Turk's-head Club is not inferior to that of being 
"the representative of Westminster or Surrey. The electors are 
" certainly more disinterested ; and I should say they were much 
" better judges of merit, if they had not rejected Lord Camden and 
" chosen me." Yet in those later days, when on the same night of 



180 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

that election of the Bishop of St. Asaph, Lord Camden and the 
Bishop of Chester were blackballed, the society had begun to lose 
the high literary tone which made its earlier days yet more 
remarkable. Shall we wonder if distinction in such a society should 
open a new life to Goldsmith ? 

His claim to enter it would seem to have been somewhat 
canvassed, at first, by at least one of the members. "As he wrote 
"for the booksellers," says Hawkins, "we at the club looked on 
" him as a mere literary drudge, equal to the task of compiling and 
" translating, but little capable of original, and still less of poetical 
' ' composition : he had, nevertheless, unknown to us "... I need 
not anticipate what it was that so startled Hawkins with its unknown 
progress : the reader has already intimation of it. It is however 
more than probable, whatever may have been thought of Goldsmith's 
drudgery, that this extremely low estimate of his capacity was 
limited to Mr. Hawkins, whose opinions were seldom popular with 
the other members of the club. Early associations clung hard to 
Johnson, and, for the sake of these, Hawkins was borne with to the 
last ; but, in the newly-formed society, even Johnson admitted him 
to be out of place. Neither in habits or opinions did he harmonise 
with the rest. He had been an attorney for many years, affecting 
literary tastes, and dabbling in music at the Madrigal-club ; but 
four years before the present, so large a fortune had fallen to him 
in right of his wife, that he withdrew from the law, and lived and 
judged with severe propriety as a Middlesex magistrate. Within 
two years he will be elected chairman of the sessions ; after seven 
years more, will be made a knight ; and, in four years after that, 
will deliver himself of five quarto volumes of a history of music, in 
the slow and laborious conception of which he is already painfully 
engaged. Altogether, his existence was a kind of pompous, par- 
simonious, insignificant drawl, cleverly ridiculed by one of the wits 
in an. absurd epitaph : " Here lies Sir John Hawkins, Without 
" his shoes and stawckins." To him belonged the original merit, in 
that age of penal barbarity and perpetual executions, of lamenting 
that in no less than fourteen cases it was still possible to cheat the 
gallows. Another of his favourite themes was the improvidence 
of what he called sentimental writers, at the head of whom he 
placed the author of Tom Jo7ies ; a book which he charged with 
having " corrupted the rising generation," and sapped "the founda- 
' ' tion of that morality which it is the duty of parents and all public 
" instructors to inculcate in the minds of young people." This 
was his common style of talk. He would speak contemptuously 
of Hogarth, as a man who knew nothing out of Covent-garden. 
Bichardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne, he looked upon as 
"stuff;" and for the three last, as men "whose necessities and 



chap, viil] THE CLUB AND ITS FIRST MEMBERS. 181 

r abilities were nearly commensurate, " he had a special contempt. As 
chairman of quarter-sessions, what other judgment could he be 
expected to have of them 1 Being men of loose principles, he 
would say, bad economists, and living without foresight, " it is 
" their endeavour to commute for their failings by professions of 
"greater love to mankind, more tender affections and finer feelings 
" than they will allow men of more regular lives, whom they deem 
' ' formalists, to possess. " With a man of such regular life, 
denouncing woe to loose characters that should endeavour to 
commute for their failings, poor Goldsmith had naturally little 
chance ; and it fared as ill with the rest of the club when ques- 
tions of " economy "or " foresight " came up. Mr. Hawkins, after 
the first four meetings, begged to be excused his share of the 
reckoning, on the ground that he did not partake of the supper. 
" And was he excused ?" asked Dr. Burney, when Johnson told 
him of the incident many years after. " Oh yes, sir," was the 
reply ; " and very readily. No man is angry at another for being 
" inferior to himself. We all admitted his plea publicly, for the 
"gratification of scorning him privately. Sir John, sir, is a very 
f unclubbable man. Yet I really believe him," pursued John- 
son, on the same occasion, very characteristically, "to be an 
" honest man at the bottom ; though to be sure he is rathei 
"penurious, and he is somewhat mean, and it must be owned he 
" has some degree of brutality, and is not without a tendency to 
" savageness that cannot well be defended." It was this latter 
tendency which caused his early secession from the club. He was 
not a member for more than two or three years. His own account 
is that he withdrew because its late hours were inconsistent with 
his domestic arrangements : but the fact was, says Boswell, that 
he one evening attacked Mr. Burke in so rude a manner, that all 
the company testified their displeasure ; and at their next meeting 
his reception was such that he never came again. 

Letitia Matilda Hawkins herself, proposing to defend her father, 
corroborates this statement. " The Burkes" she says, describing 
the impressions of her childhood., " as the men of that family were 
" called, were not then what they were afterwards considered, nor 
" what the head of them deserved to be considered for his splendid 
- c talents : they were, as my father termed them, Irish adventurers ; 
' ' and came into this country with no good auguries, nor any very 
"decided principles of action. They had to talk their way in the 
" world that was to furnish their means of living." 

An Irish adventurer who had to talk his way in the world, is 
much what Burke was considered by the great as well as little 
vulgar, for several more years to come. He was now thirty-three, 
yet had not achieved his great want, "ground to stand upon." 



382 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

Until the present year he had derived his principal help from the 
booksellers, for whom he had some time written, and continued 
still to write, the historical portion of the Annual .Register. He 
had been but a few months in enjoyment of Hamilton's pension, 
and was already extremely uneasy as to the conditions on which he 
began to suspect it had been granted, his patron not seeming 
to have relished his proposed return to London society. " I know 
"your business ought on all occasions to have the preference," 
wrote Burke, in deprecation ; "to be the first, and the last, and 
"indeed in all respects the main concern. All I contend for is, 
' ' that I may not be considered as absolutely excluded from all 
' ' other thoughts, in their proper time and due subordination. " 
The whole truth was not made obvious to him till two years later. 
He then found, and on finding it flung up the pension, that 
Hamilton had thought him placed by it in "a sort of domestic 
"situation." It was the consideration of a bargain and sale of 
independence. It was a claim for absolute servitude. " Not to 
" value myself as a gentleman," remonstrated Burke, " a freeman, 
' ' man of education, and one pretending to literature, is there any 
"situation in life so low, or even so criminal, that can subject a 
"man to the possibility of such an engagement'? Would you 
"dare attempt to bind your footman to such terms?" Mr. 
Hawkins, it is clear, would have thought the terms suitable enough 
to the situation in life of an Irish adventurer ; and the incident 
may illustrate his vulgar and insolent phrase. 

Let it always be remembered, when Burke's vehemence of will 
and sharp impetuosity of temper are referred to. These were 
less his natural defects, than his painful sense of what he wanted 
in the eyes of others. When, in later years, he proudly reviewed 
those exertions which had been the soul of the revived whig party, 
which had re-established their strength, consolidated their power 
and influence, and been rewarded with insignificant office and 
uniform exclusion from the cabinet, he had to reflect that at every 
step in the progress of his life he had been traversed and opposed, 
and forced to make every inch of his way in the teeth of prejudice 
and dislike. " The narrowness of his fortune," says Walpole, 
"kept him down." At eveiy turnpike he met, he had been called 
to show his passport ; otherwise no admission, no toleration for 
him. Improved by this, his manners could hardly be ; — the more 
other spheres of consideration were closed to him, the more would 
he be driven to dominate in his own ; — and I have little doubt 
that he somewhat painfully at times, in the first few years of the 
club, impressed others as well as Hawkins with a sense of his 
predominance. He had to " talk his way in the world that was 
"to furnish his means of living," and this was the only theatre 






chap, viii.] THE CLUB AND ITS FIRST MEMBERS. 183 

open to him yet. Here only could he as yet pour forth, to an 
audience worth exciting, the stores of argument and eloquence he 
was thirsting to employ upon a wider stage, — the variety of 
knowledge and its practical application, the fund of astonishing 
imagery, the ease of philosophic illustration, the overpowering 
copiousness of words, in which he has never had a rival. A civil 
guest, says Herbert, will no more talk all, than eat all, the feast ; 
and perhaps this might be forgotten now and then. "In my own 
" mind I am convinced," says Miss Hawkins, " however he might 
"persuade himself, that my father was disgusted with the over- 
" powering deportment of Burke, and his monopoly of the conversa- 
tion, which made all the other members, excepting his antagonist 
"Johnson, merely his auditors." Something of the same sort was 
said by that antagonist ten years after the present date, though in 
a more generous way. " What I most envy Burke for," said 
Johnson, after admitting the astonishing range of his resources, 
but denying him the faculty of wit, "is, his being constantly the 
1 ' same. He is never what we call hum-drum ; never unwilling to 
" begin to talk, nor in haste to leave off. Take up whatever 
" topic you please, he is ready to meet you . . His stream of mind 
"is perpetual. I cannot say he is good at listening. So desirous 
"is he to talk, that if one is speaking at this end of the table, he'll 
" speak to somebody at the other end. Burke, sir, is such a man, 
" that if you met him for the first time in the street, where you 
"were stopped by a drove of oxen, and you and he stepped aside 
"to take shelter but for five minutes, he'd talk to you in such a 
"manner, that, when you parted, you would say, This is an 
"extraordinary man. Now, you may be long enough with me, 
"without finding anything extraordinary." 

This was modest in Johnson, but there was more truth than he 
perhaps intended in it. In general, Burke's views were certainly 
the subtler and more able. He penetrated deeper into the 
principles of things, below common life and what is called good 
sense, than Johnson could. " Is he like Burke," asked Goldsmith, 
when Boswell seemed to exalt Johnson's talk too highly, "who 
" winds into a subject like a serpent ?" A faculty of sudden and 
familiar illustration, too, he eminently possessed ; and of this, 
which must have given such a power as well as charm to his con- 
versation, what more exquisite example, or more characteristic 
both of Johnson and himself, could be named, than the vehement 
denial he gave to Boswell's mentioning Croft's Life of Young as a 
pretty successful imitation of Johnson's style. "No, no, it is not 
"a good imitation of Johnson. It has all his pomp, without his 
"force ; it has all the nodosities of the oak without its strength." 
Then, after a pause, ' ' It has all the contortions of the Sybil, 



184 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book in. 

"without the inspiration." In the conversational expression of 
Johnson, on the other hand, there was a strength and clearness 
which was all his own, and which originated Percy's likening of it, 
as contrasted with ordinary conversation, to an antique statue 
with every vein and muscle distinct and bold, by the side of an 
inferior cast. Johnson had also wit, often an incomparable 
humour, and a hundred other interesting qualities, which Burke 
had not ; while his rough dictatorial manner, his loud voice, and 
slow deliberate utterance, so much oftener suggested an objection 
than gave help to what he said, that one may doubt the truth of 
Lord Pembroke's pleasantry to . Boswell, that "his sayings would 
"not appear so extraordinary, were it not for his bow-wow way." 
Of the ordinary listener, at any rate, the bow-wow way exacted 
something too much ; and was quite as likely to stun as to strike 
him. "He's a tremendous companion," said poor George Garrick, 
when urged to confess of him what he really thought. He brought, 
into common talk, too plain an anticipation of victory and triumph. 
He wore his determination not to be thrown or beaten, whatever 
side he might please to take, somewhat defiantly upon his sleeve ; 
and startled peaceful society a little too much with his uncle 
Andrew's habits in the ring at Smithfield. It was a sense, on his 
own part, of this eagerness to make every subject a battle-ground, 
which made him say, at a moment of illness and exhaustion, that 
if he were to see Burke then, it would kill him. From the first 
day of their meeting, now some years ago, at Garrick's dinner- 
table, his desire had been to measure himself, on all occasions, with 
that antagonist. "I suppose, Murphy," he said to Arthur, as they 
came away from the dinner, "you are proud of your countryman. 
" Cum talis sit, utinam noster esset." The club was an opportunity 
for both, and promptly seized ; to the occasional overshadowing, 
no doubt, of the comforts and opportunities of other members. 
Yet for the most part their wit- combats seem not only to have 
interested the rest, but to have improved the temper of the com- 
batants, and made them more generous to each other. " How 
" very great Johnson has been to night," said Burke to Langton, 
as they left the club together. Langton assented, but could have 
wished to hear more from another person. " Oh, no ! " replied 
Burke, "it is enough for me to have rung the bell to him." 

Bennet Langton was, in his own person, an eminent example of 
the high and humane class who are content to ring the bell to 
their friends. Admiration of the Rambler made him seek 
admittance to its author, when he was himself, some eight years 
back, but a lad of eighteen ; and his ingenuous manners and mild 
enthusiasm at once won Johnson's love. That he represented a 
great Lincolnshire family, still living at their ancient seat of 



chap, viii.] THE CLUB AND ITS FIRST MEMBERS. 185 

Langton, had not abridged his merits in the philosopher's regard ; 
and when he went up to Trinity-college Oxford, Johnson took 
occasion to visit him there ; and there made the acquaintance of 
his college chum, and junior by two years, Topham Beauclerc, 
grandson of the first Duke of St. Albans. These two young men 
had several qualities in common, — ready intellect, perfect manners, 
great love of literature, and a thorough admiration of Johnson ; 
but, with these, such striking points of difference, that Johnson 
could not comprehend their intimacy when first he saw them 
together. It was not till he discovered what a scorn of fools 
Beauclerc blended with his love of folly, what virtues of the mind 
he set off against his vices of the body, and with how much 
gaiety and wit he carried off his licentiousness, that he became as 
fond of the laughing rake as of his quiet contemplative companion. 
¥ I shall have my old friend to bail out of the • round-house," 
exclaimed Garrick, when he heard of it ; and of an incident in 
connexion with it, that occurred in the next Oxford vacation. 
His old friend had turned out of his chambers, at three o'clock in 
the morning, to have a "frisk" with the young "dogs;" had 
gone to a tavern in Covent-garden, and roared out Lord Lans- 
downe's drinking song over a bowl of bishop ; had taken a boat 
with them, and rowed to Billingsgate ; and (according to Boswell) 
had resolved, with Beauclerc, " to persevere in dissipation for the 
"rest of the day," when Langton pleaded an engagement to 
breakfast with some young ladies, and was scolded by Johnson for 
leaving social friends to go and sit with a set of wretched un-idea'd 
girls. "And as for Garrick, sir," said the sage, when his fright 
was reported to him, "he durst not do such a thing. His wife 
" would not let him ! " It was on hearing of similar proposed 
extravagances, soon after, that Beauclerc' s mother angrily rebuked 
Johnson himself, and told him an old man should not put such 
things in young people's heads ; but the frisking philosopher had 
as little respect for Lady Sydney's anger as for Garrick's decorous 
alarm. " She had no notion of a joke, sir," he said ; " had come 
' ' late into life, and had a mighty unpliable understanding ! " 

The taste for un-idea'd girls was not laughed out of Langton, 
nevertheless ; and to none did his gentle domesticities become 
dearer than to Johnson. He left Oxford with a first-rate know- 
ledge of Greek, and, what is of rarer growth at Oxford, with 
untiring and all-embracing tolerance. His manners endeared him 
to men from whom he differed most ; he listened even better than 
he talked ; and there is no figure at this memorable club more 
pleasing, none that takes kinder or vivider shape in the fancy, than 
Bennet Langton' s. He was six feet six inches high, very meagre, 
stooped very much, pulled out an oblong gold snuff-box whenever 



1S6 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book in. 

he began to talk, and had a habit of sitting with one leg twisted 
round the other and his hands locked together on his knee, as if 
fearing to occupy more space than was equitable. Beauclerc said 
he was like the stork standing on one leg, in Raffaelle's cartoon ; 
but good-naturedly ; for the still surviving affection of their 
college-days checked even Beauclerc's propensity to satire, and as 
freely still, as in those college-days, Johnson frisked and philoso- 
phised with his Lanky and his Beau. The man of fashion had 
changed as little as the easy, kindly scholar. Alternating, as in 
his Oxford career, pleasure and literature, the tavern and the 
court, books and the gaming table, he had but widened the scene 
of his wit and folly, his reasoning and merriment, his polished 
manners and well-bred contempt, his acuteness and maliciousness. 
Between the men of letters at the Turk's-head, and the glittering 
loungers in St. James' s-street, he was the solitary link of con- 
nexion ; and with George Selwyn at White's, or at Strawberry- 
hill with Walpole, was as much at home as with Johnson in 
Gerrard-street. It gave him an influence, a sort of secret charm, 
among these lettered companions, which Johnson himself very 
frankly confessed to. "Beauclerc could take more liberty with 
" him," says Boswell, " than anybody with whom I ever saw him ;" 
and when his friends were studying stately congratulations on his 
pension, and Beau simply hoped, with Falstaff, that he'd in future 
purge and live cleanly like a gentleman, he laughed at the advice 
and took it. Such, indeed, was the effect upon him of that kind 
of accomplishment in which he felt himself deficient, that he more 
than once instanced Beauclerc's talents as those which he was 
more disposed to envy than any other he had known. " Sir," 
he said to Boswell, ' ' everything comes from him so easily. It 
' ' appears to me that I labour when I say a good thing. " 

This peculiarity in Beauclerc's conversation seems undoubtedly 
and half unconsciously, to have impressed every one. Bosweli 
tries to describe it by assigning to it " that air of the world which 
"has I know not what impressive effect, as if there were some? 
"thing more than is expressed, or than perhaps we could perfectly 
"understand." Arthur Murphy calls it a humour which pleased 
the more for seeming undesigned. It might more briefly have 
been defined, I imagine, as the feeling of a superiority to his sub- 
ject. This took away from his talk every appearance of effort. 
No man was ever so free, said Johnson very happily, when he was 
going to say a good thing, from a look which expressed that it 
was coming ; or, when he had said it, from a look which expressed 
that it had come. This was a sense of the same superiority ; and 
it gave Beauclerc a predominance of a certain sort over his com- 
pany, little likely to be always pleasant, and least so when it 



chap, viii.] THE CLUB AND ITS FIRST MEMBERS. 187 

pointed shafts of sarcasm against his friends. " Now that gentle- 
"man, Mr. Beauclerc, against whom you are so violent, " said 
Boswell one day, eager to please Johnson by defending one of his 
friends, "is, I know, a man of good principles." " Then he does 
"not wear them out in practice," quietly retorted Beauclerc. At 
effective thrusts of this kind even Johnson" sometimes lost so far his 
patience and tolerance as only to make matters worse by pushing 
rudely at his friend. " Sir," he would exclaim, " you never open 
" your mouth but with intention to give pain ; and you have often 
"given me pain, not from the power of what you said, but from 
' ' seeing your intention. " The habit was doubtless an evil one, 
and no one suffered from it so much as Goldsmith. 

His position in the club will be better understood, from this 
sketch of its leading members. He found himself, of course, at a 
great disadvantage. The leading traits of character which this 
narrative has exhibited, here, for the most part, told against him. 
If, on entering it, his rank and claims in letters had been better 
ascertained, more allowance would have then been made, not alone 
by the Hawkinses, but by the Beauclercs and Burkes, for awkward- 
ness of manners and ungainliness of aspect, for that ready credulity 
which is said to be the only disadvantage of an honest man, for a 
simplicity of nature that should have disarmed instead of inviting- 
ridicule, and for the too sensitive spirit which small annoyances 
overthrew. They who have no other means of acquiring respect 
than by insisting on it, will commonly succeed ; but Goldsmith 
had too many of those other means unrecognised, and was too 
constantly contending for them, to have energy to spare for that 
simpler method. If he could only have arrived, where Steele was 
brought by the witty yet gentle ridicule of Dick Eastcourt, at the 
happiness of thinking nothing a diminution to him but what 
argued a depravity of his will, then might anything Beauclerc or 
Hawkins could have said, of his shape, his air, his manner, his 
speech, or his address, have but led to a manly enforcement of 
more real claims. But there was nothing in this respect too 
trifling, for him not to think a diminution, exacting effort and 
failure anew. It was now, more than ever, he called William 
Filby to his aid, and appeared in tailor's finery which made plainer 
the defects it was meant to hide. It was now he resented non- 
acceptance of himself by affecting careless judgments of others. It 
was now that his very avarice of social pleasure made him fretful 
of the restraints of Gerrard-street ; and all he had suffered or 
enjoyed of old, in the college class room, at the inn of Ballymahon, 
among the Axe-lane beggars, or in the garret of Griffiths, reacted 
on his cordial but fitful nature ; — never seriously to spoil, but 
very often to obscure it. Too little self-confidence begets the 



188 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

forms of vanity, and self-love will exaggerate faults as well as 
virtues. If Goldsmith had been more thoroughly assured of his 
own fine genius, the slow social recognition of it would have made 
him less uneasy ; but he was thrust suddenly into this society, 
with little beyond a vague sense of other claims than it was dis- 
posed to concede to him, however little it might sympathise with 
the special contempts of Hawkins ; and what argued a doubt in 
others, seems to have become one to himself, which he took as 
doubtful means of reinforcing. If they could talk, why so could 
he ; but unhappily he did not talk, as in festive evenings at 
Islington or the White-conduit, to please himself, but to force 
others to be pleased. Tom Davies was no very acute observer ; 
yet even he has noted of him, that, so far from desiring to appear 
to the best advantage, he took more pains to be esteemed worse 
than he was, than others do to appear better than they are : which 
was but saying, awkwardly enough, that he failed to make himself 
understood. How time will modify all this ; how far the acqui- 
sition of his fame, and its effects upon himself, will strengthen, 
with respect, the love which even they who most laughed at already 
bore him ; and in how much this laughing habit will nevertheless 
still beset his friends, surviving its excuses and occasion, — the 
course of this narrative must show. That his future would more 
than redeem his past, Johnson was the first to maintain ; for his 
own experience of hardship had helped his affection to discern it, 
and he was never, at any period of their intercourse, so forbearing 
as at this. Goldsmith's position in these days should nevertheless 
be well understood, if we would read aright the ampler chronicle 
which later years obtained. 

He who was to be the chronicler had arrived again in London. 
"Look, my lord!" exclaimed Tom Davies with the voice and 
attitude of Horatio, addressing a young gentleman who was sitting 
at tea with himself and Mrs. Davies in their little back parlour, on 
the evening of Monday the 16th of M.a,j, and pointing to an un- 
couth figure advancing towards the glass door by which the parlour 
opened to the shop, " It comes /" The hope of the young gentle- 
man's life was at last arrived. " Don't tell where I come from," 
he whispered, as Johnson entered with Arthur Murphy. ' ' This 
"is Mr. Boswell, sir," said Davies; adding waggishly, "From 
" Scotland, sir ! " " Mr. Johnson," said poor Boswell in a flutter 
(for the town was now ringing with Number Forty -five, Bute had just 
retired before the anti-Scottish storm, and Johnson's antipathies 
were notorious), "I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot 
"help it." " That, sir, I find," said the remorseless wit, " is what 
"a very great many of your countrymen cannot help. Now," he 
added, turning to Davies as he sat down, regardless of the stunned 



chap, viii.] THE CLUB AND ITS FIRST MEMBERS. 189 

young gentleman, " what do you think of Garrick ? He has 
"refused me an order to the play for Miss Williams, because he 
j ' knows the house will be full, and that an order would be worth 
"three shillings." Boswell roused himself at this, for what he 
thought would be a nattering tMng to say. He knew that Garrick 
had, but a few years before, assisted this very Miss Williams by a 
free benefit at his theatre ; but he did not yet know how little 
Johnson meant by such a sally, or that he claimed to himself a 
kind of exclusive property in Garrick, for abuse as well as praise. 
"O, sir," he exclaimed, "I cannot think Mr. Garrick would 
"grudge such a trifle to you." " Sir ! " rejoined the other, with 
a look and tone that shut up his luckless admirer for the rest of 
the evening, " I have known David Garrick longer than you have 
" done ; and I know no right you have to talk to me on the 
"subject." A characteristic commencement of a friendship very 
interesting to all men. The self-complacent young Scot could 
hardly have opened it better, than by showing how much his cool- 
ness and self-complacency could bear. He rallied from the shock ; 
and, though he did not open his mouth again, very widely opened 
his ears, and showed eagerness and admiration unabated. 

"Don't be uneasy," said Davies, following him to the door as 
he went away : "I can see he likes you very well." So emboldened, 
the "giant's den" itself was daringly invaded after a few days ; 
and the giant, among other unusual ways of showing his bene- 
volence, took to praising Garrick this time. After that, the fat 
little pompous figure now eager to make itself the giant's shadow, 
might be seen commonly on the wait for him at his various haunts : 
in ordinaries at the social dinner hour, or by Temple-bar in the 
jovial midnight watches (Johnson's present habit, as he tells us 
himself, was to leave his chambers at four in the afternoon, and 
seldom to return till two in the morning), to tempt him to the 
Mitre. They supped at that tavern for the first time on the 25th 
of June ; but Boswell, who tells us what passed, has failed to tell 
us at what particular dish it was of their " good supper," or at 
what glass of the " two bottles " of port they disposed of, that 
Johnson suddenly roared across the table, " Give me your hand ; 
"I have taken a liking to you." They talked of Goldsmith. 
He was a somewhat uneasy subject to Boswell, who could not 
comprehend how he had managed to become so great a favourite 
with so great a man. For he had published absolutely nothing 
with his name ( Boswell himself had just published Nevj- 
marhet, a Tale ) ; he was a man that as yet you never heard 
of, but as "one Dr. Goldsmith ;" and all who knew him seemed 
to know that he had passed a very loose, odd, scrambling kind of 
life. " Sir," said Johnson, " Goldsmith is one of the first men we 



190 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi, 

" now have as an author, and he is a very worthy man too. He 
"has been loose in his principles, but he is coming right." 

A first supper so successful would of course be soon repeated, 
but few could have guessed how often. They supped again at the 
Mitre on the 1st of July ; they were together in Inner Temple- 
lane on the 5th ; they supped a third time at the Mitre on the 
6th ; they met once more on the 9th ; the Mitre again received 
them on the 14th ; on the 19th they were talking again ; they 
supped at BoswelPs chambers on the 20th ; they passed the 21st 
together, and supped at the Turk's-head in the Strand ; they were 
discussing the weather and other themes on the 26th ; they had 
another supper at the Turk's-head on the 28th, and were walking 
from it, arm in arm down the Strand, when Johnson gently put 
aside the enticing solicitations of wretchedness with No, no, my 
Girl, it wonH do ("he, however" interposes Boswell, "did not 
"treat her with harshness ; and we talked of the wretched life of 
" such women") ; they sculled down to Greenwich, read verses on 
the river, and closed the day once more with supper at the Turk's- 
head, on the 30th ; on the 31st they again saw each other ; they 
took tea together, after a morning in Boswell's rooms, on the 2nd 
of August ; on the 3rd they had their last supper at the Turk's- 
head (Johnson encouraged the house because the mistress of it was 
a good civil woman, and had not much business), before Boswell's 
reluctant departure for Utrecht, where the old judge laird was 
sending him to study the law ; — and so many of Johnson's 
sympathies had thus early been awakened by the untiring social 
enjoyment, the eagerness for talk, the unbounded reverence for 
himself, exhibited by Boswell, strengthened doubtless by his youth 
and idleness (of themselves enough, to him, to make any man 
acceptable), by his condition in life, by a sort of romance in the 
lairdship of Auchinleck which he was one day to inherit, and not 
a little, it may be, by even his jabbering conceits and inexpressible 
absurdities, that on the 5th of August, the sage took a place 
beside him in the Harwich coach, accompanied him to the port 
he was to sail from, and as they parted on the beach enjoined 
him to keep a journal, and himself promised to write to him. 
" Who is this Scotch cur at Johnson's heels ? " asked some one, 
amazed at the sudden intimacy. "He is not a cur," answered 
Goldsmith; " you are too severe. He is only a bur. Tom Da vies 
"flung him at Johnson in sport, and he has the faculty of 
"sticking." 

Boswell has retorted this respectful contempt ; and in him it is 
excessively ludicrous. ' ' It has been generally circulated and 
" believed," he says, "that the Doctor was a mere fool in con- 
versation; but in truth this has been greatly exaggerated.' 1 



chap, viii.] THE CLUB AND ITS FIRST MEMBERS. 191 

Goldsmith had supped with them at the Mitre on the 1st of July, 
and flung a paradox at both their heads. He maintained that 
knowledge was not desirable on its own account, since it often was 
a source of unhappiness. He supped with them again at the Mitre 
five days later, as Boswell's guest, when Tom Davies and others 
were present ; and again was paradoxical. He disputed very 
warmly with Johnson, it seems, against the sacred maxim of the 
British Constitution, that the king can do no wrong : affirming his 
belief that what was morally false could not be politically true ; 
and that, as the king might, in the exercise of his regal power, 
command and cause the doing of what was wrong, it certainly 
might be said, in sense and in reason, that he could do wrong : 
all which appeared to Boswell sensible or reasonable proof of 
nothing but the speaker's vanity, and eager desire to be conspicuous 
wherever he was. Among the guests on this occasion was a 
presbyterian doctor and small poet, Ogilvie, who was unlucky 
enough to hit upon praise of Scotland for a subject. He began by 
modestly remarking that there was very rich land around Edin- 
burgh, upon which, says Boswell, " Goldsmith, who had studied 
r physic there, contradicted this, very untruly, with a sneering 
i 1 laugh. Disconcerted a little by this, Mr. Ogilvie then took new 
If grounds, where, I suppose, he thought himself perfectly safe ; for 
y he observed that Scotland had a great many noble wild prospects." 
"I believe, sir," said Johnson, upon this, "you have a great 
"many. Norway, too, has noble wild prospects ; and Lapland is 
"remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects. But, sir, let 
V me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees 
"is the high road which leads him to England." This unexpected 
and pointed sally produced what Boswell calls "a roar" of applause ; 
and even at all this distance of time one seems to hear that hearty 
roar, Goldsmith contributing to it not the least. 

Much to his host's discomposure ; who saw, in the very loudness 
of his laugh, only the desire to make himself as prominent as might 
be. "As usual, he endeavoured, with too much eagerness, to 
"shine." It is added, indeed, that his respectful attachment to 
Johnson was now at its height ; but no better reason is given for 
it, than that his own Literary reputation had not yet distinguished 
him so much "as to excite a vain desire of competition with his 
"great master." In short it is impossible not to perceive, that, 
from the first hour of their acquaintance, Boswell is impatient of 
Goldsmith, who appears to him very much what the French call 
un etourdi, a giddy pate ; Mr. Boswell, no doubt, feeling his own 
steady gravity and good sense quite shocked by the contrast of 
such levity. Also, he is particular to inform us, he finds Gold- 
smith's person short, his countenance coarse and vulgar, and his 



192 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 



deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting the easy gentle- 
man. Much of this feeling, however, will perhaps be accounted for by 
a passage from one of his later descriptions. " It may also be 
" observed that Goldsmith was sometimes content to be treated 
" with an easy familiarity, but upon occasions would be consequential 
4 'and important." We have but to imagine Boswell suddenly 
discovering that Goldsmith might be treated with an easy familiarity, 
to be quite certain that the familiarity would be carried to an ex- 
tent which, in mere self-defence, 
must have rendered necessary a 
resort to the consequential and 
important. And hinc illce lach- 
rymce, hence the regrets and 
surprises. How such a man 
could be thought by Johnson 
one of the first men of letters of 
the day, was hard to be under- 
stood ; and harder yet to be 
borne, that such a man should 
be a privileged man. " Doctor 
" Goldsmith being a privileged 
" man, went with him this 
" night " (the first supper at the 
Mitre) " strutting away, and call- 
" ing to me with an air of superiority, like that of an esoteric over 
" an exoteric disciple of a sage of antiquity, I go to Miss Williams." 
To be allowed to go to Miss Williams was decisive of Johnson's 
favour. She was one of his pensioners, blind and old : was now 
living in a lodging in Bolt-court, provided by him till he should 
have a room in a house to offer her, as in former days ; was 
familiar with his earlier life and its privations, was always making 
and drinking tea, knew intimately all his ways, and talked well ; 
and he never went home at night, however late, supperless or 
after supper, without calling to have tea with Miss Williams. 
" Why do you keep that old blind woman in your house ?" asked 
Beauclerc once. " Why sir," answered Johnson, " she was a friend 
' * of my poor wife, and was in the house with her when she died. 
" She has remained in it ever since, sir." 

Beauclerc' s friendships with women were not of the kind to help 
his appreciation of such gallantry as this ; though he seems to 
have known none, in even the circles of fashion, so distinguished, 
that he did not take a pride in showing to them his rusty-coated phi- 
losopher-friend. The then Reader of the Temple, Mr. Maxwell, has 
described the levees at Inner Temple-lane. He seldom called at 
twelve o'clock in the day, he says, without finding Johnson in 




chap, vin.] THE CLUB AND ITS FIRST MEMBERS. 193 

bed, or declaiming over his tea to a party of morning visitors, 
chiefly men of letters, among whom Goldsmith, Murphy, Hawkes- 
worth (an old friend and fellow-worker under Cave), and Langton, 
are named as least often absent. Sometimes learned ladies were 
there, too ; and particularly did he remember a French lady of 
wit and fashion doing him the honour of a visit. It was in the 
summer of this year : and the lady was no other than the famous 
Countess de Boufflers, acknowledged leader of French society, 
mistress of the Prince of Conti, aspiring to be his wife, and of 
course, in the then universal fashion of the savantes, philosophes, 
and beaux esprits of Paris, an Anglomane. She had even written 
a tragedy in English prose, on a subject from the Spectator ; 
and was now on a round of visitings, reading her tragedy, break- 
fasting with Walpole, dining with the Duke of Grafton, supping at 
Beauclerc's, out of patience with every body's ridiculous abuse of 
every other body that meddled in politics, and out of breath with 
her own social exertions. "Dans ce pays-oi," she exclaimed, " c'est 
"un effort perpetuel pour se divertir ;" and, exhausted with it 
herself, she did not seem to think that any one else succeeded any 
better. It was a few days after Horace Walpole's great breakfast 
at Strawberry-hill, where he describes her with her eyes a foot 
deep in her head, her hands dangling and scarce able to support 
her knitting-bag, that Beauclerc took her to see Johnson. They 
sat and talked with him some time ; and were retracing their way 
up Inner Temple-lane to the carriage, when all at once they heard 
a voice like thunder, and became conscious of Johnson hurrying 
after them. On nothing priding himself more than on his polite- 
ness, he had taken it into his head, after a little reflection, that he 
ought to have done the honours of his literary residence to a 
foreign lady of quality ; and, eager to show himself a man of 
gallantry, he was now hurrying down the staircase in violent agita- 
tion. He overtook them before they reached the Temple-gate, 
and, brushing in between Beauclerc and the Countess, seized her 
hand and conducted her to her coach. His dress was a rusty 
brown morning suit, a pair of old shoes by way of slippers, a little 
shrivelled wig sticking on the top of his head, and the sleeves of 
his shirt and the knees of his breeches hanging loose. "A consi- 
derable crowd of people gathered round," says Beauclerc, "and 
' ' were not a little struck by this singular appearance. " The hero 
of the incident would be the last person to be moved by it. The 
more the state of his toilet dawned upon him, the less likely would 
he be to call attention to it. There was no more remarkable trait in 
Johnson, and certainly none in which he more contrasted with the 
subject of this narrative, than that, as Miss Reynolds was always 
surprised to remark, no external circumstances ever prompted him 

K 



194 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

to makt! the least apology for them, or to seem even sensible of their 
existence. 

It was not many months after this that he went to see Goldsmith 
in a new lodging, in the locality which not Johnson alone had 
rendered illustrious, but its association with a line of the greatest 
names of English literature ; the Dorset*;, Raleighs, Seldens, 
Clarendons, Beaumonts, Fords, Marstons, Wycherleys, and Con- 
greves. He had taken rooms on the then library staircase of the 
Temple. They were a humble set of chambers enough (one Jeffs, 
the butler of the society, shared them with him) ; and, on 
Johnson's prying and peering about in them, after his short- 
sighted fashion, flattening his face against every object he looked 
at, Goldsmith's uneasy sense of their deficiencies broke out. * ' I 
" shall soon be in better chambers, sir, than these," he said. 
" Nay, sir," answered Johnson, " never mind that. Nil te 
" quozsiveris extra." Invaluable advice! could Goldsmith, blot- 
ting out remembrance of his childhood and youth, and looking 
solely and steadily on the present and the future, but have dared 
to act upon it. 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE ARREST AND WHAT PRECEDED IT. 1763—1764. 

Goldsmith's removal from the apartments of Newbery's relative 
in Wine Office-court, to his new lodging on the library 
■ml or staircase of the Temple, took place in an early month of 
17G4, and seems to connect itself with circumstances at 
the close of 1763 which indicate a less cordial understanding 
between himself and Newbery. He had ceased writing for the 
British Magazine ; was contemplating an extensive engagement 
with James Dodsley ; and had attempted to open a connection 
with Tonson of the Strand. The engagement with Dodsley went 
as far as a formal signed-agreement (for a Chronological History of 
the Lives of Eminent Persons of Great Britain and Ireland), in 
which the initials of a medical bachelor are first assumed by him ; 
and at the close of which another intimation of his growing impor- 
tance appears, in the stipulation that "Oliver Goldsmith shall 
" print his name to the said work." It was to be in two volumes, 
octavo, of the size and type of the Universal History ; each 
volume was to contain thirty-five sheets ; Goldsmith was to be 
paid at the rate of three guineas a sheet ; and the whole was to be 
delivered in the space of two 3>-ears at farthest. But nothing came 



chap, ix.] THE ARREST AND WHAT PRECEDED IT. 195 

of it. Dodsley had inserted a cautious proviso that he was not to 
be required to advance anything till the book should be comple- 
ted ; and hence, in all probability, the book was never begun. 
The overture to Tonson had not even so much success. It was a 
proposition from Goldsmith for a new edition of Pope, which 
Tonson was so little disposed to entertain that he did not conde- 
scend to write his refusal. He sent a printer with a message 
declining it ; delivered with so much insolence, that the messenger 
was said to have received a caning for his pains. 

The desire to connect himself with Pope, seems to point in the 
direction of those secret labours which are to prove such wonder- 
ment to Hawkins. He was busy at this time with his poem and 
his novel ; and, if there be any truth in what great fat Doctor 
Cheyne of Bath told Thomson, that, as you put a bird's eyes out 
to make it sing the sweeter, you should keep poets poor to animate 
their genius, he was in excellent condition for such labour. But 
what alone seems certain as to that matter is, that be it light or 
dark, the song, if a true song, will make itself audible ; and for 
the rest, one is better pleased to think that Goldsmith's philo- 
sophy was opposed to fat Doctor Cheyne's, and that he preferred to 
believe, with Thomson, both the birds and the poets happier in the 
light, and singing sweetest amid luxuriant woods, with the full 
spring blooming around them. He has expressed this in a passage 
of his Animated Nature, so charming, yet so little known, that I 
shall be thanked for here subjoining it. 

The music of every bird in captivity produces no very pleasing sensations : 
it is but the mirth of a little animal insensible of its unfortunate situation. It 
is the landscape, the grove, the golden break of day, the contest upon the haw- 
thorn, the fluttering from branch to branch, the soaring in the air, and the 
answering of its young, that gives the bird's song its true relish. These united, 
improve each other, and raise the mind to a state of the highest, yet most- 
harmless exultation. Nothing can in this situation of mind be more pleasing 
than to see the lark warbling on the wing ; raising its note as it soars, until it 
seems lost in the immense heights above us ; the note continuing, the bird 
itself unseen ; to see it then descending with a swell as it comes from the 
clouds, yet sinking by degrees as it approaches its nest ; the spot where all its 
affections are centred, the spot that has prompted all this joy. 

These few sentences, exquisite in feeling, in expression emulate the 
music they describe. 

There is a note among Newbery's papers with the date of the 
17th of December, 1763, which states Goldsmith to have received 
twenty-five guineas from the publisher for which he promises to 
account. At this time, too, he disappears from his usual haunts, 
and is supposed to have been in concealment somewhere. Certainly 
he was in distress, and on a less secure footing with Newbery than 
at the commencement of the year. 

K2 



19G OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

My narrative had been thus far printed in the first edition, when 
I was favoured with a brief note of Goldsmith's which gave strong 
corroboration to the statements made in it. It would seem that 
between the date of his leaving Wine Office-court in "an early 
"month of 1764" (ante, 194), and his return to Islington at 
" the beginning of April" in that year (post, 197), he had occupied, 
while his attic in the library staircase of the Temple was preparing, a 
temporary lodging in Gray's Inn ; and that the engagement with 
the Dodsleys which I have described as entered into at this time, had 
actually proceeded as far as the preparation of copy, and the claim 
for advance of money. This, as well as the sharp poverty he was 
suffering, appears from the brief note to James Dodsley, which has 
been communicated to me by my friend Mr. Peter Cunningham. 
"Sir," it runs, being dated from "Gray's Inn," and addressed 
to "Mr, James Dodesley in Pall Mall," on the 10th of March, 
1764, "I shall take it as a favour if you can let me have ten 
" guineas per bearer, for which I promise to account. I am, sir, 
"your humble servant, Oliver Goldsmith. P. S. I shall call to 
"see you on Wednesday next with copy, <fec." Whether the 
money was advanced, or the copy supplied, does not appear. 

Yet it was at this time of his own necessities we find him also 
busied with others' distresses, and helping to relieve them. Among 
his own papers at his death was found the copy of an appeal to the 
public for poor Kit Smart, who had married Newbery's step- 
daughter ten years before, and had since, with his eccentricities and 
imprudences, wearied out all his friends but Goldsmith and Johnson. 
Very recently, as a last resource, he had been taken to a mad-house ; 
and it was under this restraint, while pens and ink were denied to 
him, that he is said to have indented on the walls of his cell with a 
key, his Song to David. His friends accounted for the excellence 
of the composition by asserting that he was most religious when 
most mad ; but Goldsmith and Johnson were nevertheless now 
exerting themselves for his release. " Sir," said the latter to 
Boswell, at one of their recent interviews, "my poor friend Smart 
"showed the disturbance of his mind, by falling upon his knees 
"and saying his prayers in the street, or in any other unusual 
"place. Now although, rationally speaking, it is greater madness 
"not to pray at all, than to pray as Smart did, I am afraid there 
"are so many who do not pray, that their understanding is not 
" called in question." " I did not think," he remarked to Burney, 
"he ought to be shut up. His infirmities were not noxious to 
" society. He insisted on people praying with him ; and I'd 
' ' as lief pray with Kit Smart as any one else. Another charge 
"was, that he did not love clean linen; and, sir, I have no 
"passion for it." 






chap, ix.] THE ARREST AND WHAT PRECEDED IT. 197 

Their exertions were successful. Smart was again at large at 
the close of the year, and on the third of the following 
April (1764) a sacred composition named Hannah, with ™, „'„ 
his name as its author, and music by Mr. Worgan, was 
produced at the king's theatre. The effort connects itself with 
a similar one by Goldsmith, made at the same time. He wrote 
the words of an Oratorio in three acts, on the subject of the 
Captivity in Babylon. But it is easier to help a friend than one- 
self ; and his own Oratorio lay unrepresented in his desk. All he 
received for it was ten guineas, paid by Dodsley for his right to 
publish it, in which Newbery was to share ; and all of it that 
escaped to the public while he lived were two songs ; in which his 
own sorrows and hope seemed as legibly written as those of the 
Israelitish women. 

To the last moment of his breath 

On hope the wretch relies, 
And even the pang preceding death 

Bids expectation rise. 

Hope, like the gleaming taper's light, 

Adorns and cheers our way, 
And still as darker grows the night 

Emits a brighter ray. 

The night was very dark round Goldsmith just now, yet the ray 
was shining steadily too. In few of the years of his life have we 
more decisive evidence of struggles and distress than in this of 
1764 ; in none did he accomplish so much for an enduring fame. 
But it is a year very difficult to describe with any accuracy of detail. 
We have little to guide us beyond the occasional memoranda of 
publishers, and the accounts of Mrs. Elizabeth Fleming. To the 
Islington lodging he returned at the beginning of April (having 
paid rent for the retention of " the room," meanwhile, at the rate 
of about three shillings a week) ; and his expenses to the end of 
June are contained in his landlady's bill. They seem to argue 
fewer enjoyments, and less credit with Mrs. Fleming. .No dinners 
or teas are thrown into the bargain. The sixpence for " sassafras " 
(a humble decoction which the poet does not seem to have despised, 
now dealt in by apothecaries chiefly) is always carefully charged. 
The loans are only four, and of moderate amount ; a shilling to 
"pay the laundress," and ten-pence, one and two-pence, and six- 
pence ' ' in cash. " There are none of the old entries for port 
wine. Two-pence, twice, for " a pint of ale," and two-pence for 
" opodildock," express his very humble " extras." But as these 
curious documents are now before me, and have never been very 
correctly, or at all completely printed, it will be well to subjoin 



198 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 



a literal transcript of the two principal accounts, for 1763 and 
1764, from the original manuscripts in Mr. Murray's possession. 



1763. Doct r . Goldsmith 



Dr. to Eliz 



Aug. 22. 


A Pint of Mountain 




A Gentleman's Dinner 


24. 


A "bottle of Port . 




4 Gentlemen Tea 


Aug. 25. 


Docf. Reman Dinner and 


Sept. 5. 


Docf. Reman Dinner 


7. 


Sasafras 


11. 


Doct r . Reman Dinner 


29. 


A bottle Port 




Mr. Baggott Dinner . 


Oct. 8. 


Sasafras 


10. 


Mr. Baggott Tea 


14. 


Paper . 


24. 


Sasafras . 


25. 


Paid the Newes Man 


30. 


Wine and Cakes 


31. 


To the Rev d . Mr. Tyrrell 




Mr. Baggott Dinner 




Sasafras 


Nov. 5. 


Sasafras . 




10 sheets of paper 


8. 


Penns 




Paper .... 




Sasafras . 




To 3 Months' Board 




To Shoes cleaning 




To washing . 



Tea 



Fleming . 



. £0 


1 





. 








. 


2 





. 


1 


6 


. 








. 








. 





6 


. 








. 


2 





. 








. 





3 


. 








. 


1 





. 





3 


. 


16 


104 


. 


1 


6 


. 


2 


6 


. 








. 





6 


. 





6 


. 





5 


. 





95 
^4 


. 


1 





. 





6 


. 12 


10 





. 


2 


6 


. 


18 


01 



Rec'd, Dec. 9, 1763, by the hands of 
Mr. Newbery, the Contents in full. 



£15 3 0^ 



Eliz. Fleming. 



1763. 



"Washing account. 
Doct r . Goldsmith Dr. to Washing. 



Aug. 14. 



30. 



Sept. 14. 



27. 



8 Shirts 2 plain 


. 


2 


6 


6 Neckcloths 1 Cap 


. 





ol 


4 p r Silk Stockings .... 


. 





8 


2 p r worsted Do ... . 


. 





2 


7 Shirts 1 plain ..... 


. 


2 


3 


5 Neckcloths 1 Cap 


. 





3 


2 p r Silk Stockings 1 p r worsted 


. 





5 


6 Shirts 1 plain .... 


. 


1 


11 


5 Neckcloths 1 Cap 


. 





3 


3 p r . Silk Stockings 1 p r worsted 


. 





7 


7 Shirts 1 plain 


. 


2 


3 


4 p r Silk Stockings 1 p r worsted 


. 





9 


6 Neckcloths 1 Cap .... 


. 





3| 


Carried forward 


£0 


12 


7 



THE AREEST AND WHAT PRECEDED IT. 



199 



Brought forward £0 12 7 



Oct. 3. 1 Shirt 

4 p r Silk Stockings 2 p r "worsted 

4 Neckcloths 1 Cap . . 
24. 8 Shirts 2 plain . 

5 Neckcloths 1 Cap . 

3 p r Silk Stockings 1 p r worsted 
Nov. 8. 2 Shirts 1 plain 

2 Neckcloths 1 p r Stockings . 



4 

10 

2* 

2 6 

3 

7 

7 



2 



£0 18 0^ 





1764. Doctf. Goldsmith Dr. to Eliz. Fleming 






To the Eent of the Eoom from Dec. 25 to March 29 . 


£1 


17 6 


April 2. 


A Post Letter 





1 


3. 


The Stage Coach to London 





6 


7. 


Lent to pay the Laundress . . 





1 


11. 


A post letter ...... 





1 


15. 


A Parcell by the Coach .... 





2 


18. 


A Post letter 





1 


19. 


Sasafras ....... 





6 


25. 


Sasafras 





6 


May 2. 


Sasafras ........ 





6 


3. 


A Post Letter ...... 





1 


7. 


A Post Letter . 





1 




Sasafras ... . 





6 




Grave the boy for carrying the Parcell to Pall Mai 


L 


8 


12. 


Sasafras ........ 





6 


16. 


A Post Letter 





4 


17. 


Penns and Paper . . . . . . 





1 3 


21. 


Sasafras ....... 





6 


23. 


A post letter 





1 


24. 


Lent in Cash ..... 





10 




A pint of Ale 





2 


25. 


Paper 





1 


28. 


Sasafras ....... 





6 




Opodildock ....... 





2 


June 8. 


A letter to the Post 





1 


9. 


Lent in Cash 





1 2 




Sasafras ........ 





6 


21. 


Lent in Cash ...... 





6 


27. 


A post Letter . 





1 


28. 


A post Letter ..... 





1 


30. 


Sasafras ....... 





6 




To cleaning shoes 





2 6 




Washing and mending. 






April 17. 


3 Shirts, 3 Neckcloths, 4 p r Stockings . 





1 5i 


May '6. 


2 Shirts, 2 Neckcloths, 1 Cap 





94 


12. 


4 Shirts, 4 Neckcloths, 3 p r Stockings 





1 9" 




To mending 3 p r Stockings 





3 


26. 


3 Shirts, 3 neckcloths, 1 p r Stockings . 

Carried forward 





1 2i 




£2 


18 5i 



£2 


18 


H 





1 


n 








i 


. 


1 


10 


. 





3 


. 





6 



200 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

Brought forward 
June 8. 4 Shirts, 4 neckcloths, 1 p r Stockings, 1 Cap 
1 p r Stockings mending .... 
22. 4 Shirts, 4 Neckcloths, 1 p r Stockings . 

3 p r Stockings mending .... 

For Cloth and wristing a Shirt . 

To 3 months' Board &c. from March 29 to June 29 12 10 

£15 12 9 
Oliver Goldsmith. 

The impression left by the second of these bills is borne out by 
Newbery's concurrent memoranda of money advanced ; in sums 
ridiculously small, and for such work as the revision of short 
translations, and papers for the Christian Magazine. What were 
not unusual in the previous year, as cash advances of one, two, 
and even four and five guineas, from the publisher, have now 
dwindled down to "shillings" and "half-crowns;" and it is matter 
of doubt whether Newbery, to satisfy outstanding claims, did not 
engage him for some part of his time in work for his juvenile 
library. The author of Caleb Williams, who had been a child's pub- 
lisher himself, had always a strong persuasion that Goldsmith wrote 
Goody Two Shoes ; and if so, the effort belongs to the present year : 
for Mrs. Margery, radiant with gold and ginger-bread, and rich 
in pictures as extravagantly ill-drawn as they are dear and well- 
remembered, made her appearance at Christmas. Other aid was also 
sought to eke out that of Newbery ; and a sum of thirteen guineas 
is acknowledged from Mr. Griffin (the publisher of the Essays in the 
following year), but without mention of the labours it rewarded. 

That, in all these memoranda, the entire labours of the year 
cannot yet be accounted for, it is hardly necessary to add. We 
are left to guess what other work was in progress, for which 
advances were not available ; and in this, an anecdote told by 
Reynolds will offer some assistance. He went out to call upon 
Goldsmith, he says, not having seen him for some time ; and no 
one answering at his door, he opened it without announcement, 
and walked in. His friend was at his desk, but with hand up- 
lifted, and a look directed to another part of the room ;. where a little 
dog sat with difficulty on his haunches, his eyes fixed imploringly 
on his teacher, whose rebuke for toppling over he had evidently 
just received. Reynolds advanced, and looked past Goldsmith's 
shoulder at the writing on his desk, which seemed to be some portions 
of a poem. He looked more closely, and was able to read a 
couplet which had been that instant written : the ink of the 
second line was wet. 

By sports like these are all their cares beguil'd ; 
The sports of children satisfy the child. 



chap, ix.] THE ARREST AND WHAT PRECEDED IT. 



201 



This visit of Reynolds is one of the few direct evidences which 
the year affords of his usual intercourse with his more distinguished 
friends. There is no reason to doubt, however, that he had been 




pretty constant in his attendance at the club during the past 
winter ; he was a member of the Society of Arts, and had been 
often at their meetings, of which the only trace now left is the 
record of loans of money begged from Newbery there (in which, 
as I find from inspection of the originals, the prudent publisher 
was careful to note whenever the loan, though but of five shillings 
and threepence, was " without receipts ") ; and his miseries and 
necessities must have been great indeed, that would have kept him 
long a stranger to the theatre. 

The last season (that of 1763 and '64) had been one of peculiar 
interest. The year 1763 had opened with evil omen to Garrick. 
For the first time since the memorable night of his triumph 
at Goodman's Fields, when, in the midst of unexampled en- 
thusiasm, his eye fell upon a little deformed figure in a side 
box, was met by the approving glance of an eye as bright as 
his own, and, in the admiration of Alexander Pope, his heart 
swelled with the sense of fame, Garrick, at the commencement of 
that year, felt his influence shaken and his ground insecure. On 
a question of prices, the Fribble whom Churchill has gibbeted in 
the Bosciad led a riotous opposition in his theatre, to which he was 
compelled to offer a modified submission ; and not many weeks 
later, after appearing in a comedy by Mrs. Sheridan and giving 

K3 



202 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [boor hi. 

it out to be his last appearance in any new play (the character was 
a solemn old coxcomb, and one of his happiest performances), he 
announced his determination to go abroad for two years. The 
pretence was health ; but the real cause (resentment of what he 
thought the public indifference, and a resolve that they should 
feel his absence) is surmised in a note of Lord Bath's which lies 
before me, addressed to his nephew Cohnan, the ad interim 
manager of the theatre. 

Garrick left London in the autumn ; and his first letter to 
Colman from Paris describes • the honours which were showering 
upon him, the plays revived to please him, and the veteran actors 
recalled to act before him. He had supped with Marmontel and 
d'Alembert ; "the Clairon " was at the supper, and recited them 
a charming scene from A thalie ; and he had himself given the 
dagger scene in Macbeth, the curse in Lear, and the falling asleep 
of Sir John Brute, with such extraordinary effect, that " the most 
" wonderful wonder of wonders" was nothing to it. Yet on the 
very day that letter was written (the 8th of October 1763), a 
more wonderful wonder was enacting on the boards of his own 
theatre. A young bankers' clerk named Powell, to whom, on 
hearing him rehearse, he had given an engagement before he left 
London of three pounds a week for three years, appeared on that 
day in Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster, and took the audience 
by storm. Foote is described to have been the only unmoved 
spectator. The rest of the audience were not content with clapping ; 
"they stood up and shouted," says Walpole ; and Foote's jeering 
went for nothing. Walpole describes the scene with what seems to 
be a satisfied secret persuasion (in which Goldsmith certainly 
shared) that Garrick had at last met a dangerous rival. He calls 
the new actor "what Mr. Pitt called my Lord Clive," a heaven- 
born hero ; says the heads of the whole town are turned ; and 
describes all the boxes taken for a month. Powell's salary was at 
once raised to ten pounds a-week, George Garrick consenting on 
the part of his brother ; and such was the anxiety of the town to 
see him in new characters, and the readiness of the management 
in giving way to it, that in this his first season, from October '63 
to May '64, he appeared in seventeen different plays, to a profit 
on the receipts of nearly seven thousand pounds. His most suc- 
cessful efforts indicate the attractive points of his style. In 
Philaster he appeared sixteen times, in Posthumus eleven, seven 
times in Jaffier, six in Castalio, and five in Alexander. Garrick 
himself had meanwhile written to him from Italy to warn him 
against such characters as the latter, and restrain him from 
attempting too much. The advice was admirably written, and 
gratefully acknowledged ; nor is there any reason to doubt its 



chap, ix.] THE ARREST AND WHAT PRECEDED IT. 203 

sincerity. Remoteness of place has in some respects the effect of 
distance of time ; and the great actor, doubtless not sorry to be 
absent till the novelty should abate, was less likely to be jealous 
in Piedmont or the Savoy than in the green-room of Drury-lane. 
He knew himself yet unassailed in what he had always felt to be 
his main strength, his versatility and variety of power. Three 
men were now dividing his laurels ; and till Powell could double 
Richard and Sir John Brute, till O'Brien could alternate Ranger 
with Macbeth, and till Weston could exhibit Lear by the side of 
Abel Drugger, Garrick had no call to be seriously alarmed. 

Be that as it might, however, Powell's success was a great thing 
for the authors. He came to occupy for them, opportunely, a field 
which the other had avowedly abandoned ; and Goldsmith, always 
earnest for the claims of writers, sympathised strongly in his 
success. Another incident of the theatrical season made hardly 
less noise. O'Brien's charms in Ranger and Lovemore proved too 
much for Lady Susan Fox-Strangways, and she ran away with 
him. It cured Walpole for a time of his theatre-going. He had 
a few days before been protesting to Lord Hertford that he had 
the republican spirit of an old Roman, and that his name was 
thoroughly Horatius ; but a homely-looking earl's-daughter run- 
ning away with a handsome young actor, ran away with all his 
philosophy. He thought a footman would have been preferable ; 
and could not have believed that Lady Susan would have stooped 
so low. On the other hand, Goldsmith speaks of O'Brien's 
elegance and accomplishments ("by nature formed to please," said 
Churchill), and seems to think the lady and the player not unfairly 
matched. But much depends on whether these things are viewed 
from a luxurious seat in the private boxes, or from a hard bench 
in the upper gallery. 

Poverty pressed heavily just now upon Goldsmith, as I have 
said. His old friend Grainger came over on leave from his West 
India station, to bring out his poem of the Sugar Cane ; and found 
him in little better plight than in his garret days. l ' When I 
I* taxed little Goldsmith for not writing," he says to Percy, " as 
' ' he promised me, his answer was, that he never wrote a letter in 
" his life ; and 'faith I believe him, unless to a bookseller for 
"money." In the present year, it would seem, he had more ex- 
perience than success in applications of that kind. Yet he was 
also himself in communication with Grainger's correspondent. 
Percy was still, as he had long been, busy with his Reliques ; and 
in the collection and arrangement of that work, which, more than 
any other in its age, contributed to bring back to the study 
and appreciation of poetry, a natural, healthy, passionate tone, 
took frequent counsel with Goldsmith. To their intercourse 



204 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

respecting it, we owe the charming ballad with the prettiest of 
opening lines, "Turn gentle hermit of the dale;" and Percy- 
admitted many obligations of knowledge and advice, in which no 
other man of letters in that day could so well have assisted him. 
The foremost of them, Johnson himself, was indifferent enough to 
the whole scheme ; though at this time a visitor, with Miss 
Williams, in Percy's vicarage-house. 

Little else than a round of visitings, indeed, does the present 
year seem to have been to Johnson ; though the call for his 
Shakespeare (on which he had so long been engaged) was never so 
urgent as now. He passed part of the spring with his friend 
Langton in Lincolnshire, where it was long remembered how sud- 
denly, and to what amazement of the elders of the family, he had 
laid himself down on the edge of a steep hill behind the house, 
and rolled over and over to the bottom ; he had stayed the summer 
months and part of August with Percy, at Easton Mauduit vicarage 
in Northamptonshire ; and on his return to town he had formed an 
acquaintance with the Thrales. Is it necessary to describe the 
tall, stately, well-informed, worthy brewer, and tory member for 
Southwark ; or his brisk, vivacious, half-learned, plump little wife 1 
Is not their friendship known as the solace of Johnson's later life, 
and remembered whenever he is named 1 Thrale was fond of the 
society of men of letters and celebrity ; and Arthur Murphy, who 
had for some years acted as provider in that sort to the weekly 
dinners at Southwark and Streatham, had the honour of intro- 
ducing Johnson. Mrs. Thrale was at this time as pretty as she 
was lively, garrulous, and young ; to more than a woman's quick- 
ness of observation, added all a woman's gentleness and kindness 
of heart ; indulged in literary airs and judgments, which she put 
on with an audacity as full of charms as of blunders ; and beyond 
measure captivated Johnson. She was his Madam, My Mistress, 
his Dearest of all Dear Ladies, whom he lectured only because he 
loved : for where she came she brought him sunshine. Like some 
' ' gay creature of the element " she flitted past the gloomy scholar, 
still over-toiled and weary, though resting at last. " You little 
" creatures," he exclaimed, on her appearing before him one day in 
a dark coloured dress, "you should never wear those sort of 
" clothes ; they are unsuitable in every way. What ! have not 
" all insects gay colours 1 " The house of the hospitable brewer 
became to him a second home, where unaccustomed comforts 
awaited him, and his most familiar friends were invited to please 
him ; immediately after his first visit, the Thursdays in every week 
were set apart for dinner with the Thrales ; and before long there 
was a " Mr. Johnson's room " both in the Southwark mansion and 
the Streatham villa. Very obvious was the effect upon him. His 






chap, ix.] THE ARREST AND WHAT PRECEDED IT. 205 

melancholy was diverted, and his irregular habits lessened, all said 
who observed him closely ; but not the less active were his 
sympathies still, in the direction of that Grub-street world of 
struggle and disaster, of cock-loft lodgings and penny-ordinaries, 
from which he had at last effected his own escape. 

An illustration of this, at the commencement of their intercourse, 
much impressed Mrs. Thrale. One day, she says, he was called 
abruptly from their house after dinner, and returning in about 
three hours, said he had been with an enraged author, whose 
landlady pressed him for payment within doors, while the bailiffs 
beset him without ; that he was drinking himself drunk with 
madeira to drown care, and fretting over a novel which when 
finished was to be his whole fortune ; but he could not get it done 
for distraction, nor could he step out of doors to offer it to sale. 
Mr. Johnson, therefore, she continues, set away the bottle, and 
went to the bookseller, recommending the performance, and de- 
siring some immediate relief ; which when he brought back to the 
writer, the latter called the woman of the house directly to partake 
of punch, and pass their time in merriment. "It was not," she 
concludes, "till ten years after, I dare say, that something 
" in Doctor Goldsmith's behaviour struck me with an idea that he 
"was the very man, and then Johnson confessed that he was so ; 
"the novel was the charming Vicar of Wakefield." 

A more scrupulous and patient writer corrects some inaccuracies 
of the lively little lady, and professes to give the anecdote authen- 
tically from Johnson's own exact narration. " I received one morn- 
" ing," Boswell represents Johnson to have said, " a message from 
" poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in 
"his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as 
" soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to 
" him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and 
" found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he 
" was in a violent passion, I perceived that he had already 
" changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of madeira and a glass 
" before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be 
" calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might 
' ' be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel ready for 
" the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it, and saw 
" its merit ; told the landlady I should soon return ; and, having 
" gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Gold- 
' ' smith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating 
" his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill." 

Nor does the rating seem altogether undeserved, since there are 
certainly considerable grounds for suspecting that Mrs. Fleming 
was the landlady. The attempt to clear her appears to me to fail 



206 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 



in many essential points. Tracing the previous incidents minutely, 
it is almost impossible to disconnect her from this consummation 
of them, with which, at the same time, every trace of Goldsmith's 



tiMM) 




residence in her house is brought to a close. As for the incident 
itself, it has nothing startling for the reader who is familiar with 
what has gone before it. It is the old story of distress, with the 
addition of a right to resent it which poor Goldsmith had not felt 
till now ; and in the violent passion, the tone of indignant reproach, 
and the bottle of madeira, one may see that recent gleams of 
success and of worldly consideration have not strengthened the old 
habits of endurance. The arrest is plainly connected with New- 
bery's reluctance to make further advances ; of all Mrs. Fleming's 
accounts found among his papers, the only one unsettled is that 
for the summer months preceding the arrest ; nor can I altogether 
even resist the suspicion, considering the intimacy between the 
families of the Newberys and the Flemings which Newbery's 
bequests in his will show to have existed, that the publisher him- 
self, for an obvious convenience of his own, may have suggested, 
or at least sanctioned, the harsh proceeding. The manuscript of 
the novel (of which more hereafter) seems by both statements, in 
which the discrepancies are not so great but that Johnson himself 
may be held accountable for them, to have been produced re- 
luctantly, as a last resource ; and it is possible, as Mrs. Thrale 



chap, x.] THE TRAVELLER AND WHAT FOLLOWED IT. 207 

intimates, that it was still regarded as " unfinished ; " but, if 
strong adverse reasons had not existed, Johnson would surely have 
carried it to ISTewbery. He did not do this. He went with it to 
Francis ISTewbery the nephew ; does not seem to have given any 
very brilliant account of the " merit " he had perceived in it (four 
years after its author's death, he told Reynolds that he did not 
think it would have had much success) ; and, rather with regard 
to Goldsmith's immediate want, than to any confident sense of the 
value of the copy, asked and obtained the sixty pounds. "And 
" sir," he said to Boswell some years later, " a sufficient price too, 
" when it was sold ; for then the fame of Goldsmith had not been 
" elevated, as it afterwards was by his Traveller ; and the book- 
f ' seller had such faint hopes of profit by his bargain that he kept 
"the manuscript by him a long time, and did not publish it till 
"after the Traveller had appeared. Then, to be sure, it was 
"accidentally worth more money." 

On the poem, meanwhile, the elder ISTewbery had consented to 
speculate ; and this circumstance may have made it hopeless to 
appeal to him with a second work of fancy. For, on that very 
day of the arrest, the Traveller lay completed in the poet's desk. 
The dream of eight years, the solace and sustainment of his exile 
and poverty, verged at last to fulfilment or extinction ; and the 
hopes and fears which centered in it, doubtless mingled on that 
miserable day with the fumes of the madeira ! In the excitement 
of putting it to press, which followed immediately after, the 
nameless novel recedes altogether from the view ; but will reappear 
in due time. Johnson approved the verses more than the 
novel ; read the proof-sheets for his friend ; substituted here 
?^nd there, in more emphatic testimony of general approval, a line 
of his own ; prepared a brief but hearty notice for the Critical 
Review, which was to appear simultaneously with the poem ; and 
as the day of publication approached, bade Goldsmith be of good 
cheer. 



CHAPTEK X. 



THE TRAVELLER AND WHAT FOLLOWED IT. 1764—1765. 

" This day is published," said the Public Advertiser of the 19th 
of December 1764, "price one shilling and sixpence, The 
" Traveller ; or, a Prospect of Society, a Poem. By Oliver ,„, „g 
" Goldsmith, M.B. Printed for J. Newbery in St. Paul's 
" Church Yard." It was the first time that Goldsmith had 






208 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

announced Lis name in connection with anything lie Lad written ; 
and with it he had resolved to associate his brother Henry's name. 
To him he dedicated the poem. From the midst of the poverty 
which Henry could least alleviate, and turning from the celebrated 
men with whose favour his own fortunes were bound up, he 
addressed the friend and companion of his infancy, to whom, in 
all his sufferings and wanderings, his heart, untravelled and unsul- 
lied, had still lovingly gone back. " The friendship between us 
"can acquire no new force from the ceremonies of a Dedication," 
he said : "but as a part of this poem was formerly written to you 
"from Switzerland, the whole can now, with propriety, be only 
" inscribed to you. It will also throw light upon many parts of 
"it, when the reader understands that it is addressed to a man, 
"who, despising fame and fortune, has retired early to happiness 
"and obscurity with an income of forty pounds a year. I now 
"perceive, my dear brother," continued Goldsmith, with affecting 
significance, "the wisdom of your humble choice. You have 
"entered upon a sacred office, where the harvest is great, and the 
" labourers are but few ; while you have left the field of ambition, 
' ' where the labourers are many, and the harvest not worth carry- 
"ing away." Such as the harvest was, however, he was himself 
at last about to gather it in. IJe proceeded to describe to his 
brother the object of his poem, as an attempt to show that there 
may be equal happiness in states that are differently governed from 
our own, that every state has a particular principle of happiness, 
and that this principle in each may be carried to a mischievous 
excess : but he expressed a strong doubt, since he had not taken a 
political "side," whether its freedom from individual and party 
abuse would not wholly bar its success. 

While he wrote, he might have quieted that fear. As the poem 
was passing through the press, Churchill died. It was he who 
had pressed poetry into the service of party, and for the last three 
years, to apparent exclusion of every nobler theme, made harsh 
political satire the favoured utterance of the Muse. But his rude 
strong spirit had suddenly given way. Those unsubdued passions ; 
those principles, unfettered rather than depraved ; that real man- 
liness of soul, scorn of convention, and unquestioned courage ; 
that open heart and liberal hand ; that eager readiness to love or 
to hate, to strike or to embrace, had passed away for ever. Nine 
days earlier, his antagonist Hogarth had gone the same dark 
journey ; and the reconciliation that would surely, even here, 
have sooner or later vindicated their common genius, the hearty 
English feeling which they shared, and their common cordial 
hatred of the falsehoods and pretences of the world, was left to be 
accomplished in the grave. Be it not the least shame of the 



chap, x.] THE TRAVELLER AND WHAT FOLLOWED IT. 209 

profligate politics of these three disgraceful years, that, arraying in 
bitter hostility one section of the kingdom against the other, they 
turned into unscrupulous personal enemies such men as these ; 
made a patriot of Wilkes ; statesmen of Sir Francis Dashwood, 
Lord Sandwich, and Bubb Dodington ; and, of the free and 
vigorous verse of Churchill, a mere instrument of perishable 
faction. Not without reason on that ground did Goldsmith con- 
demn and scorn it. It was that which had made it the rare 
mixture it so frequently is, of the artificial with the natural and 
impulsive ; which so fitfully blended in its author the wholly and 
the partly true ; which impaired his force of style with prosaical 
weakness ; and controlled, by the necessities of partisan satire, his 
feeling for nature and for truth. Yet should his critic and fellow- 
poet have paused before, in this dedication to the Traveller, he 
branded him as a writer of lampoons. To Charles Hanbury 
Williams, but not to Charles Churchill, such epithets belong. The 
senators who met to decide the fate of turbots were not worthier 
of the wrath and the scourge of Juvenal, than the men who, 
reeking from the gross indulgences of Medmenham abbey, drove 
out William Pitt from the cabinet, sat down by the side of Bute, 
denounced in the person of Wilkes their own old profligate 
associate, and took the public morality into keeping. Never, that 
he might merely fawn upon power or trample upon weakness, had 
Churchill let loose his pen. There was not a form of mean 
pretence or servile assumption, which he did not use it to denounce. 
Low, pimping politics, he abhorred ; and that their worthless 
abettors, to whose exposure his works are so incessantly devoted, 
have not carried him into oblivion with themselves, argues some- 
thing for the sound morality and permanent truth expressed in 
his manly verse. By these the new poet was to profit ; as much 
as by the faults which perished with the satirist, and left the lesson 
of avoidance to his successors. In the interval since Pope's and 
Thomson's death, since Collins' s faint sweet song, since the silence 
of Young, of Akenside, and of Gray, no such easy, familiar, and 
vigorous verse as Churchill's, had dwelt in the public ear. The 
less likely was it now to turn away, impatient or intolerant of 
the Traveller. 

Johnson pronounced it a poem to which it would not be easy to 
find anything equal, since the death of Pope. Though covering 
but the space of twenty years, this was praise worth coveting, and 
was honestly deserved. The elaborate care and skill of the verse, 
the exquisite choice and selectness of the diction, at once recalled 
to others, as to Johnson, the master so lately absolute in the 
realms of verse ; and with these there was a rich harmony of tone, 
a softness and simplicity of touch, a happy and playful tenderness, 



210 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

which belonged peculiarly to the later poet. With a less pointed 
and practised force of understanding than in Pope, and in some 
respects less subtle and refined, the appeal to the heart in Gold- 
smith is more gentle, direct, and pure. The predominant impres- 
sion of the Traveller is of its naturalness and facility ; and then is 
felt the surpassing charm with which its every-day genial fancies 
invest high thoughts of human happiness. The serene graces of 
its style, and the mellow flow of its verse, take us captive, before 
we feel the enchantment of its lovely images of various life, 
reflected from its calm still depths of philosophic contemplation, 
Above all do we perceive that it is a poem built upon nature ; that 
it rests upon honest truth ; that it is not crying to the moon and 
the stars for impossible sympathy, or dealing with other worlds, 
in fact or imagination, than the writer has himself lived in and 
known. Wisely had Goldsmith avoided, what, in the false-heroic 
versifiers of his day, he had wittily condemned ; the practice, even 
commoner since, of building up poetry on fantastic unreality, of 
clothing it in harsh inversions of language, and of patching it out 
with affectations of by-gone vivacity : "as if the more it was unlike 
"prose, the more it would resemble poetry." Making allowance 
for a brief expletive rarely scattered here and there, his poetical 
language is unadorned yet rich, select yet exquisitely plain, con- 
densed yet home-felt and familiar. He has considered, as he says 
himself of Parnell, " the language of poetry as the language of life," 
and "conveys the warmest thoughts in the simplest expression." 

In what way the Traveller originated, the reader has seen. It 
does not seem necessary to discuss in what precise proportions its 
plan may have risen out of Addison's Letter from Italy. Shaped 
in any respect by Thomson's remark, in one of his letters to Bubb 
Dodington, "that a poetical landscape of countries, mixed with 
" moral observations on their characters and people, would not be 
"an ill-judged undertaking," it certainly could not have been; 
for that letter was not made public till many years after Goldsmith's 
death, when it appeared in Seward's Anecdotes. The poem had 
been, eminently and in a peculiar degree, written from personal 
fe eling and observation ; and the course of its composition has 
been traced with the course of its author's life. When Boswell 
came back to London some year or so after its appearance, he tells 
us with what amazement he had heard Johnson say that "there 
' ' had not been so fine a poem since Pope's time ; " and then 
amusingly explains the phenomenon by remarking, that "much, 
' ' no doubt, both of the sentiments and expression were derived 
"from conversation" with the great lexicographer. What the 
great lexicographer really suggested w r as a title, Tlie Philosophic 
Wanderer, rejected for something simpler ; as, if offered, the 



chap, x.] THE TRAVELLER AND WHAT FOLLOWED IT. 211 

Johnsonian sentiment and expression would, I suspect, have been. 
But " Garth did not write his own Dispensary " and Goldsmith 
had still less chance of obtaining credit for his. The rumour that 
Johnson had given great assistance, is nevertheless contradicted 
even by Hawkins ; where he professes to relate the extreme asto- 
nishment of the club, that a newspaper essayist and bookseller's 
drudge should have written such a poem. Undoubtedly that was 
his own feeling ; and others of the members shared it, though it is 
I to be hoped in a less degree. ''Well," exclaimed Chamier, " I do 
"believe he wrote this poem himself; and let me tell you, that 
"is believing a great deal." Goldsmith had left the club early 
that night, after "rattling away as usual." In truth he took 
little pains himself, in the thoughtless simplicity of those social 
hours, to fence round his own property and claim. ' ' Mr. Gold- 
¥ smith," asked Chamier, at the next meeting of the club, "what 
" do you mean by the last word in the first line of your 
"Traveller? 

* Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.' 

"Do you mean tardiness of locomotion?" Johnson, who was 
near them, took part in what followed, and has related it. " Gold- 
" smith, who would say something without consideration, answered 
Yes. ' I was sitting by, and said, ' No, sir, you did not mean 
tardiness of locomotion : you mean that sluggishness of mind 
which comes upon a man in solitude. ' ' Ah ! ' exclaimed G old- 
" smith, ' that was what I meant.' Chamier," Johnson adds, 
" believed then that I had written the line, as much as if he had 
"seen me write it." Yet it might be, if Burke had happened to 
be present, that Johnson would not have been permitted, so 
obviously to the satisfaction of every one in the room, dictatorially 
to lay down thus expressly what the poet meant. For who can 
doubt that he also meant slowness of motion ? The first point of 
the picture is that : the poet is moving slowly, his tardiness of gait 
measuring the heaviness of heart, the pensive spirit, the melancholy, 
of which it is the outward expression and sign. Goldsmith ought 
to have added to Johnson's remark that he meant all it said, and 
the other too ; but no doubt he fell into one of his old flurries when 
he heard the general aye ! aye ! that saluted the Great Cham's 
authoritative version. While he saw that superficially he had been 
wrong, he must have felt that properly explained his answer was 
substantially right ; but he had no address to say so, the pen not 
being hi his hand. 

The lines which Johnson really contributed, he pointed out 
himself to Boswell, when laughing at the notion that he had taken 
any more important part in it. They were the line which now 



a i 
tt ( 
it ( 



212 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

stands 420th in the poem ; and, omitting the last couplet but one, 
the eight concluding lines. The couplet so grafted on his friend's 
insertion by Goldsmith himself, is worth all that Johnson added ; 
though its historical allusion was somewhat obscure. 

The lifted axe, the agonising wheel, 

Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel. 

Who was Luke, and what was his iron crown ? is a question 
Tom Davies tells us he had often to answer ; being a great resource 
in difficulties of that kind. " The Doctor referred me," he says, 
in a letter to the reverend Mr. Granger, who was compiling his 
Biographical History and wished to be exact, "to a book called 
" Geographic Curieuse, for an explanation of Luke's iron crown." 
The explanation, besides being in itself incorrect, did not mend 
matters much. "Luke" had been taken simply for the euphony 
of the line. He was one of two brothers Dosa who had headed a 
revolt against the Hungarian nobles, at the opening of the sixteenth 
century ; but, though both were tortured, the special horror of the 
red-hot crown was inflicted upon George. "Doctor Goldsmith says," 
adds Davies, " he meant by Damien's iron the rack ; but I believe 
"the newspapers informed us that he was confined in a high tower, 
' ' and actually obliged to lie upon an iron bed. " So little was Davies, 
any more than Chamier, Johnson, or any one else, disposed to 
take the poet's meaning on the authority of his own explanation of it. 

" Nay, sir," said Johnson very candidly, when it was suggested, 
some years afterwards, that the partiality of its author's friends 
might have weighed too much in their judgment .of this poem, 
"the partiality of his friends was always against him. It was 
"with difficulty we could give him a hearing." Explanation of 
much that receives too sharp a judgment in ordinary estimates of 
his character, seems to be found, as I have said, in this. "When 
partiality takes the shape of pity, we must not wonder if it is met 
by the vanities, the conceits, the half shame and half bravado, of 
that kind of self-assertion which is but self-distrust disguised. 
Very difficult did Goldsmith find it to force his way, with even the 
Traveller in his hand, against these patronising airs and charitable 
allowances. " But he imitates you, sir," said Mr. Bos well, when, 
on return from his Dutch studies, he found this poem had really 
gone far to make its writer for the time more interesting than even 
Johnson himself. "Why no, sir," Johnson answered "Jack 
' ' Hawkesworth is one of my imitators ; but not Goldsmith. 
"Goldy, sir, has great merit." " But, sir," persisted the staunch 
disciple, "he is much indebted to you for his getting so high in 
"the public estimation." "Why, sir," complacently responded 
the sage, " he has perhaps got sooner to it by his intimacy with me. " 



■ 



chap, x.] TEE TEA YELLER AND WHAT FOLLOWED IT. 213 

Without the reserves, the merit might sometimes be allowed ; 
but seldom without something of a sting. " Well, I never more 
" shall think Doctor Goldsmith ugly," was the frank tribute of the 
sister of Reynolds, after hearing Johnson read the Traveller aloud 
" from the beginning to the end of it," a few days after it was 
published. Here was another point of friendly and most general 
agreement. " Renny dear," now a mature and very fidgety little 
dame of seven-and-thirty, never was noted for her beauty ; and 
few would associate such a thing with the seamed, scarred face of 
Johnson ; but the preponderating ugliness of Goldsmith was a 
thing admitted and allowed for all to fling a stone at, however 
brittle their own habitations. Miss Reynolds founded her admiring 
promise about the Traveller on what she had herself said at a 
party in her brother's house some days before. It was suddenly 
proposed, as a social game after supper, to toast ordinary women, 
and have them matched by ordinary men ; whereupon one of the 
gentlemen having given Miss Williams, Johnson's blind old 
pensioner, Miss Reynolds instantly matched her with Goldsmith ; 
and this whimsical union so enchanted Mrs. Cholmondeley (Peg 
Woffington's sister, who had married an honourable and reverend 
gentleman, well known to the set), that, though she had at the 
time some pique with Renny dear, she ran round the table, kissed 
her, and said she forgave her everything for her last toast. 
"Thus," exclaimed Johnson, who was present, and whose wit at 
his friend's expense was rewarded with a roar, "thus the ancients, 
" on the making-up of their quarrels, used to sacrifice a beast 
"betwixt them." Poor Goldsmith ! It was not till the sacrifice 
was more complete, and the grave had closed over it, that the 
"partiality" of his friends ceased to take these equivocal shapes. 
" There is not a bad line in that poem of the Traveller ," said 
Langton, as they sat talking together at Reynolds's, four years 
after the poet's death; "not one of Dryden's careless verses." 
"I was glad," interposed Reynolds, "to hear Charles Fox say it 
"was one of the finest poems in the English language." "Why 
"were you glad?" rejoined Langton. "You surely had no 
"doubt of this before ?" "No," exclaimed Johnson, decisively ; 
" the merit of the Traveller is so well established, that Mr. Fox's 
" praise cannot augment it, nor his censure dimini sh it." 

Not very obvious at the first, however, was its progress to this 
decisive eminence. From the first it had its select admirers, and, 
as we now know from his letters, one of the earliest was 
Charles James Fox, though then only a lad of seventeen ; ™ ' °°* 
but their circle somewhat slowly widened. " The beauties 
"of this poem," observed the principal literary newspaper of 
the day, the St. James 1 s Chronicle, two months after its publication, 



214 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iii.I 

"are so great and various, that we cannot but be surprised they 
"have not been able to recommend it more to general notice."! 
Goldsmith began to think, as he afterwards remarked to Boswell, ' 
that he had come too late into the world for any share of its i 
poetical distinctions ; that Pope and others had taken up the ' 
places in the temple of fame ; and that as but few at any one 
period can possess poetical reputation, " a man of genius can now 
"hardly acquire it." "That," said Johnson, when this saying 
was related to him, ' ' is one of the most sensible things I have 
"ever heard of Goldsmith. It is difficult to get literary fame, 
"and it is every day getting more difficult." Nevertheless, though 
slowly, the poem seems to have advanced steadily ; and, in due 
course, translations of it appeared in more than one continental 
language. A month after the notice in the St. James's Clironicle, 
a second edition was published ; a third was more quickly called 
for ; a fourth was issued in August ; and the ninth had appeared 
in the year when the poet died. That anything more substantial 
than fame arose to him out of these editions, is, however, very 
questionable. The only payment that can with certainty be 
traced in Newbery's papers as for " Copy of the Traveller, a poem" 
leaves it in no degree doubtful that for twenty guineas Goldsmith 
had surrendered all his interest in it, except that which, with each 
successive issue, still prompted the limse labor. Between the first 
and last, thirty-six new lines had been added, and fourteen of the 
old cancelled. Some of the erasures would now, perhaps, raise a 
smile. No honest thought disappeared, no manly word for the 
oppressed. The "wanton judge" and his "penal statutes" 
remained ; indignant denunciations of the tyrannies of wealth, 
sorrowful and angry protestings that 

Laws grind the poor and rich men rule the law, 

were still undisturbed. But words quietly vanished, here and 
there, that had spoken too plainly of the sordid past ; and no 
longer did the poet proclaim, in speaking of the great, that, 
" inly satisfied," above their pomps he held his ragged pride. The 
rags went the way of the confession of poverty in the Polite 
Learning ; and of those hints of humble habits which were common 
in the Busy Body and the British Magazine, but are found no; 
longer in Essays by Mr. Goldsmith. 

With that title, and the motto " Collecta revirescunt," a three- 
shilling duodecimo volume of those re-published essays was now 
issued by Mr. Griffin for himself and Mr. Newbery, who each paid 
him ten guineas for liberty to offer this tribute to the growing 
reputation of the Traveller. He corrected expressions, as I nave 
said ; lifted Islington tea-gardens into supper at Vauxhall ; exalted 



chap, x] THE TRAVELLER AND WHAT FOLLOWED IT. 215 

the stroll in White-conduit-garden to a walk in the park ; and, in 
an amusing preface, disclaimed any more ambitious motive than 
one of self-preservation, in collecting such fragments. As many- 
entertainers of the public, he said, had been partly living upon 
him for some years, he was now resolved to try if he could not 
live a little upon himself ; and he compared his case to that of the 
fat man he had heard of in a shipwreck, who, when the sailors, 
pressed by famine, were taking slices off him to satisfy their hunger, 
insisted with great justice on having the first cut for himself. 
" Tf there be a pride in multiplied editions," continued Goldsmith, 
"1 have seen some of my labours sixteen times reprinted, and 
"claimed by different parents as their own. I have seen them 
" flourished at the beginning with praise, and signed at the end 
j ' with the names of Philautos, Philalethes, Philelutheros, and 
" Philanthropos. " Names that already figured, as the reader will 
hardly need to be reminded, in those adventures of a philosophic 
vagabond which formed part of the little manuscript novel now 
lying, apparently little cared for, on the dusty shelves of Mr. 
Francis Newbery. 

Another piece of writing which belongs to this period, and 
which did not find its way to the public till the appearance of the 
novel to whose pages it had been transferred, was the ballad of 
Edwin and Angelina. It was suggested, as I have said, in the 
course of the ballad-discussions with Percy in preparation of the 
Beliques ; and was written before the Traveller appeared. 
" Without informing any of us," says Hawkins, again referring to 
the club, "he wrote and addressed to the Countess, afterwards 
" Duchess of Northumberland, one of the first poems of the lyric 
"kind that our language has to boast of." A charming poem 
undoubtedly it is, if not quite this ; delightful for its simple and 
mingled flow of incident and imagery, for the pathetic softness and 
sweetness of its tone, and for its easy, artless grace. He had taken 
pains with it, and he set more than common store by it himself ; 
so that when, some two years hence, his old enemy Kenrick, 
taking advantage of its appearance in the novel, assumed the 
character of " Detector " in the public prints, denounced it as a 
plagiarism from the Beliques, and entreated the public to compare 
the insipidity of Doctor Goldsmith's negus with the genuine flavour 
of Mr. Percy's champagne, he thought it worth while, even against 
that assailant, to defend his own originality. The poem he was 
charged to have copied it from, was a composition by Percy of 
stanzas old and new (much modern writing, I need hardly remark, 
entered into the " ancient " reliques ; the editor publishing among 
them, for example, his friend Grainger's entirely modern and 
exquisite Bryan and Pereene) : and Goldsmith's answer was to the 



216 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. |i 

effect that he did not think there was any great resemblance I 
between the two pieces in question ; but- that if any existed, Mr. I 
Percy's ballad was the imitation, inasmuch as the Edwin and I 
Angelina had been read to him two years before (in the present 1 
year), and at their next meeting he had observed, ' ' with his usual 1 
"good humour," that he had taken the plan of it to form certain j 
fragments of Shakespeare into a ballad of his own. " He then," ; 
added Goldsmith, " read me his little cento, if I may so call it, I 
"and I highly approved it." 

Out of these circumstances it of course arose that Goldsmith's 
ballad was shown to the wife of Percy's patron, who had some 
taste for literature, and affected a little notice of its followers. 
The countess admired it so much that she had a few copies pri- 
vately printed. I have seen the late Mr. Heber's, with the title- 
page of "Edwin and Angelina, a ballad; by Mr. Goldsmith. 
" Printed for the amusement of the Countess of JS^orthumberland. " 
It is now rare ; and has a value independent of its rarity, in its 
illustration of Goldsmith's habit of elaboration and pains-taking in 
the correction of his verse. By comparing it with what was after- 
wards published, we perceive that even the gentle opening line has 
been an after-thought ; that four stanzas have been re-written ; 
and that the two which originally stood last have been removed 
altogether. These, for their simple beauty of expression, it is 
worth while here to preserve. The action of the poem having 
closed without them, they were on better consideration rejected ; 
and young writers should study and make profit of such lessons. 
Posterity has always too much upon its hands to attend to what is 
irrelevant or needless ; and no one so well as Goldsmith seems to 
have known that the writer who would hope to live, must live by 
the perfection of his style, and by the cherished and careful beauty 
of unsupernuous writing. 

Here amidst sylvan bowers we'll rove, 

From lawn to woodland stray : 
Blest as the songsters of the grove, 

And innocent as they. 

To all that want, and all that wail, 

Our pity shall be given ; 
And when this life of love shall fail, 

We'll love again in heaven. 

Intercourse with Northumberland-house, except when Mr. Percy's ] 
library was open to him during his chaplaincy there, began and I 
ended with this poem. Its author is only afterwards to be traced j 
there on one occasion, characteristically described by Hawkins. 
" Having one day," he says, " a call to wait on the late Duke, then 



chap, x.] THE TRAVELLER AND WHAT FOLLOWED IT. 217 

' Earl, of Northumberland, I found Goldsmith waiting for an 
' audience in an outer room ; I asked him what had brought him 
' there : he told me, an invitation from his lordship. I made my 
'business as short as I could, and, as a reason, mentioned that 
" Doctor Goldsmith was waiting without. The Earl asked me if I 
' was acquainted with him : I told him I was, adding what I 
' thought likely to recommend him. I retired, and staid in the 
' outer room to take him home. Upon his coming out, I asked 
'him the result of his conversation. 'His lordship,' says he, 
' ' told me he had red [sic] my poem,' meaning the Traveller, l and 
' ' was much delighted with it ; that he was going lord-lieutenant 
* ' of Ireland, and that, hearing that I was a native of that 
' ' country, he should be glad to do me any kindness. ' And what 
' did you answer, asked I, to this gracious offer ? ' Why, '-said he, 
' ' I could say nothing but that I had a brother there, a clergyman, 
' ' that stood in need of help : as for myself ' " (this was added for 
the benefit of Hawkins) " 'I have no dependence on the promises 
4 ' of great men : I look to the booksellers for support ; they are 
' ' my best friends, and I am not inclined to forsake them for 
''others.' Thus," adds the teller of the anecdote, "did this 
' idiot in the affairs of the world trifle with his fortunes, and put 
' back the hand that was held out to assist him ! Other offers of 
' a like kind he either rejected or failed to improve, contenting 
f himself with the patronage of one nobleman, whose mansion 
' afforded him the delights of a splendid table, and a retreat for a 
'few days from the metropolis." 
The incident related may excuse the comment, attached to it. 
Indeed, the charge of idiotcy in the affairs of the Hawkins-world, 
may even add to the pleasure with which we contemplate that 
older-world picture beside it, of frank simplicity and brotherly 
affection. This poor poet, who, incomprehensibly to the Middlesex 
magistrate, would thus gently have turned aside to the assistance 
of his poorer brother the hand held out to assist himself, had only 
a few days before been obliged to borrow fifteen shillings and six- 
pence "in Fleet-street," of one of those "best friends," with 
whose support he is now fain to be contented. But the reader has 
already seen that since the essay on Polite Learning was written, 
its author's personal experience had sufficed to alter his view as to 
the terms and relations on which literature should hereafter hope 
to stand with the great ; and the precise value of Lord Northum- 
berland's offer seems in itself somewhat doubtful. Percy, indeed, 
took a subsequent opportunity of stating that he had discussed the 
subject with the earl ; and had received an assurance that if the 
latter could have known how to serve Goldsmith (it does not seem 
to have occurred to Percy that one mode had already been suggested 

L 



218 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book in. 

without any effect), if he had been made aware, for example, that 
he wished to travel, "he would have procured him a sufficient 
" salary on the Irish establishment, and have had it continued to 
"him during his travels." But this was not said till after Gold- 
smith's death : when many ways of serving him, meanwhile, had 
been suffered to pass by unheeded ; and when his poor struggling 
brother, for whom he begged thus explicitly the earl's patronage, 
had also sunk unnoticed to the grave. The booksellers, on the 
other hand, were patrons with whom success at once established 
claims, independent and incontrovertible ; and the Traveller, to a 
less sanguine heart than its writer's, already seemed to separate, 
with a broad white line, the past from that which was to come. 
No Griffiths bondage could again await him. He had no longer 
any personal bitterness, therefore, to oppose to Johnson's general 
allegiance to the " trade ;" though, at the same time, with Johnson, 
he made special and large reservations. For instance, there was 
old Gardener the bookseller. Even Griffiths, by the side of 
Gardener, looked less ill-favoured. This was he who had gone to 
Kit Smart in the depths of his poverty, and drawn him into the 
most astounding agreement on record. It was not discovered till 
poor Eat Smart went mad ; and Goldsmith had but to remember 
how it was discovered, to forgive all the huffing speeches that 
Johnson might ever make to him ! "I wrote, sir," said the lather, 
"for some months in the Universal Visiter for poor Smart, not 
" then knowing the terms on which he was engaged to write, and 
" thinking I was doing him good. I hoped his wits would soon 
"return to him. Mine returned to me, and I wrote in the Uni- 
" versal Visitor no longer." It was a sixpenny weekly-pamphlet ; 
the agreement was for ninety-nine years ; and the terms were that 
Smart was to write nothing else, and be rewarded with one-sixth 
of the profits ! It was undoubtedly a thing to remember, this 
agreement of old Gardener's. The most thriving subject in the 
kingdom of the booksellers could hardly fail to recall it now and 
then. And the very man to remind Goldsmith of it, in go 3d- 
natured contrast to the opportunity he had lost, was the companion 
with whom he left Northumberland-house that day. Nevertheless 
he left it with greater cheerfulness, and a better-founded sense of 
independence, than if he had consented to substitute a reliance 
"on the promises of great men." 






chap. xi. 1 GOLDSMITH IN PRACTICE AND BURKE IN OFFICE. 219 



CHAPTEE XI 



GOLDSMITH IN PRACTICE AND BURKE IN OFFICE. 1765. 

The "nobleman" to whom Sir John Hawkins refers, at the 
close of his anecdote last related, as having vouchsafed to 

-I >1 RK 

be Oliver Goldsmith's solitary patron, was not yet enno- ™' 07 
bled ; nor could the relation he had opened with the poet 
on the appearance of the Traveller be properly described as one of 
" patronage," though it doubtless at times afforded him the 
delights of a splendid table and a retreat for a few days from the 
metropolis. Mr. Robert Nugent, the younger son of an old and 
wealthy Westmeath family, was a jovial Irishman and man of wit, 
who proffered hearty and "unsolicited" friendship to Goldsmith 
at this time as a fellow patriot and poet, and maintained ever after 
an easy intercourse with him. In early life he had written an ode 
to Pulteney, which contains the masterly verse introduced by 
Gibbon in his character of Brutus ; 

(What though the good, the brave, the wise, 
With adverse force undaunted rise, 

To break the eternal doom ! 
Though Cato lived, though Tully spoke, 
Though Brutus dealt the god-like stroke, 

Yet perished fated Rome !) 

and he had attached himself to the party of the Prince of Wales, 
whom he largely assisted with money. In the imaginary Leicester- 
house administrations commemorated by Bubb Dodington, he was 
always appointed to office ; and had held appointments more 
substantial as comptroller of the prince's household, a lord of the 
treasury, and vice-treasurer of Ireland. He talked well, though 
coarsely, " with a vivacity of expression often bordering on the 
"Irish bull," and was a great favourite with women. His first wife, 
Lord Fingal's daughter, brought him a good fortune, and bore him 
a son ; by his second wife, to whom he was the third husband, the 
sister and heiress of Secretary Craggs (Pope's friend), and described 
as "a good-humoured, pleasant, fat woman," he had do issue, but 
obtained large landed estates, one of the finest domains in Essex, 
and the mansion of Gosfield Hall ; and from a third less lucky 
marriage, with Elizabeth Drax the Countess Dowager of Berkeley, 
sprang the daughter (its only issue he consented to recognise) who 

l2 



220 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. Tbook in. < 

continued after the separation to live with her father and aunt, 
Mrs. Peg Nugent, till she married the Marquis of Buckingham in 
1775, and united the names of Nugent and Grenville. Richard 
Glover (the epic and dramatic poet of Leicester-house) characteris 3S 
him briefly as a jovial voluptuous Irishman, who had left popery 
for the protestant religion, money and widows ; but Glover lived to 
see him surrender these favourites, and, not far from his eightieth 
year, go back to popery again. "When his friendship with Gold- 
smith began, he was a tall, stout, vigorous man of nearly sixty, 
with a remarkably loud voice and a broad Irish brogue ; whose 
strong and ready wit, careless decision of manner, and reckless 
audacity of expression, obtained him always a hearing from the 
House of Commons, in which he had sat for four-and-twenty years. 
He was now watching, with more than ordinary personal interest, 
the turn of the political wheel. So, for the interest they took in 
the opening of Burke's great political life, was his new friend 
Goldsmith, and every member of the Gerrard-street club. 

The ministry which succeeded Bute's (that of George Grenville 
and the Bedfords, or, as they were called, the Bloomsbury gang) 
was coming to a close at last, after a series of impolitic blunders 
without parallel in the annals of statesmen. Early in March of 
the previous year ('64), after convulsing England from end to end 
with the question of general warrants and the ignoble persecution 
of Wilkes, the first attempt was made upon America which roused 
her to rebellion. In the autumn of that year, all her towns and 
cities were in loud and vehement protest; and before the year 
closed, Benjamin Franklin had placed in Grenville's hands a 
solemn protest of resistance on the part of his fellow colonists to 
any proposition to tax them without their consent. Yet with only 
one division in the Commons, when the attendance was most paltry, 
and without a single negative in the Lords, Grenville persisted in 
passing, at the opening of the present year, the act which virtually 
created the Republic of America. Burke was in the gallery of the 
house during its progress (it had been his habit for some months to 
attend almost every discussion), and said, nine years afterwards, that, 
far from anything inflammatory, he had never in his life heard so 
languid a debate. Horace Walpole described it to Lord Hertford 
as a "slight day on the American taxes." Barre, who had served 
in America and knew the temper of the people, was the only man 
whose language approached to the occasion ; and as he had lately 
lost his regiment for his vote against general warrants, it was 
laughed at as the language of a disappointed man. Pitt, on 
occasions less momentous, had come to the house on crutches, 
swathed in flannel ; yet now he was absent. He afterwards 
prayed that some friendly hand could have laid him prostrate on 



chap, xi.] GOLDSMITH IN PRACTICE AND BURKE IN OFFICE. 221 

the floor of the house to bear his testimony against the bill ; but 
it is doubtful if the desire to see Grenville more completely- 
prostrate, had not had more to do with his non-appearance than 
either gout or fever. 

The minister's triumph in his Stamp Act, however, was brief. 
The King had hardly given it his glad assent, when the first slight 
seizure of the terrible malady which in later days more sorely 
afflicted him, necessitated an act of regency ; and the mismanagement 
of the provisions of that act hopelessly embroiled the minister with 
his. master. Then came the clash and confusion of the parties into 
which the once predominant old whig party had been lately rent 
asunder, and which the present strange and sullen seclusion 
of Pitt aggravated and seemed to make hopeless. In vain he was 
appealed to ; in vain the poor King made piteous submissions to 
induce him to return to power ; for while, on the one hand, a new 
administration seemed impossible without his help, on the other it 
was plain that Grenville and the Bedfords were tottering to their 
final fall. The King was intensely grateful to them for their 
invasion of the public liberties, and had joyfully co-operated with 
them in the taxation of America : but he hated them because they 
hated Bute, who had placed them in power ; because they in- 
sulted his mother, the Princess Dowager, whose intrigues had 
sustained them in power ; and because they suffered Buckingham 
gardens to be overlooked rather than vote him a somewhat paltry 
grant, which would have secured to the crown what is now a 
property of almost incredible value. When his uncle Cumberland 
came back from Hayes with Pitt's formal refusal, he thought in 
his despair of even the old Duke of Newcastle, began to make 
atonement for recent insults to the house of Devonshire, and threw 
out baits for those old pure whigs who had been to this time the 
objects of his most concentrated hatred. Doubts and distrust 
shook the Princess Dowager's friends, in which Nugent of course 
largely shared ; and expectation stood on tip-toe in Gerrard-street, 
where his friends of the club could hardly avoid taking interest in 
what affected the fortunes of Edmund Burke. 

For Burke, not unreasonably, looked to obtain employment in 
the scramble. Hawkins said he had always meant to offer him- 
self to the highest bidder ; but the calumny is hardly worth 
refuting. He had honourably disengaged himself from Hamilton, 
and scornfully given back his pension ; nor were his friends kept 
ignorant that he had since attached himself to the party of 
whigs the most pure and least powerful in the state. Lord Bucking- 
ham was at their head : a young nobleman of princely fortune and 
fascinating manners, who made up for powers of oratory in which 
he was wholly deficient, by an inestimable art of attracting and 



222 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

securing friends ; whose character was unstained by any of the 
intrigues of the past ten years ; and who had selected for his 
associates men like himself, less noted for their brilliant talents than 
for their excellent sense and spotless honour. With the extremer 
opinions of Lord Temple, these men had little in common. Though 
staunch against general warrants and invasions of liberties and 
franchises, they were as far from being Wilkite as the reckless 
demagogue himself ; and they had obtained the general repute of 
a kind of middle constitutional party. Little compatible was this 
with present popularity, Burke well knew ; but he saw beyond the 
ignorant present. To the last he hoped that Pitt might be moved ; 
and in the May of this year so expressed himself to his friend Flood, 
in a letter which is curious evidence of his possession of the 
political secrets of the day ; but, though believing that without the 
splendid talents and boundless popularity of the great commoner, 
" an admirable and lasting system" could not then be formed, he 
also believed that the only substitute for Pitt's genius was Rock- 
ingham's sense and good faith, and that on this plain foundation 
could be gradually raised a party which might revive whig purity 
and honour, and last when Pitt should be no more. Somewhat 
thus, too, the honest and brave Duke of Cumberland may have 
reasoned ; when to his hapless nephew the "King, again crying out 
to him in utter despair, and imploring him, with or without Pitt, 
to save him from George Grenville and the Duke of Bedford, he 
gave his final counsel. Lord Rockingham was summoned ; con- 
sented, with his party, to take office ; and was sworn in First 
Lord on the 8th of July. Lord Shelburne would not join without 
Pitt : but a young whig duke (Grafton), of whom much was at 
that time expected, gave in his adhesion ; and General (afterwards 
Marshal) Conway, Cumberland's personal friend and the cousin and 
favourite of Horace Walpole, a braver soldier than politician, but 
a persuasive speaker, and an honourable as well as most popular 
man, gave his help as secretary of state : William Burke, 
Edmund's distant relative and dear friend, being appointed his 
under-secretary. Upon this the old meddling " fizzling " Duke of 
Newcastle went and warned Conway's chief against "these Burke* " 
Edmund's real name, he said, was O'Bourke ; and he was not only 
an Irish adventurer, a Jacobite, and a papist, but he had shrewd 
reasons for believing him a concealed Jesuit to boot. Nevertheless, 
seven days after the administration was formed, the Jesuit and 
Jacobite, introduced by their common friend Fitzherbert (who had 
been named to the Board of Trade), was appointed private secretary 
to the Marquis of Rockingham ; and Burke's great political life 
began. 

The first letter of the newly appointed secretary to the new 



chap, xi.] GOLDSMITH IN PRACTICE AND BURKE IN OFFICE. 223 

Premier, written from Queen Anne -street the day after his 
appointment, was to David Garrick ; and is the first pleasant 
evidence we receive, that whatever may be the success of his 
adventure in politics, there is small chance of its weaning him 
from the society of wits and men of letters to which this narra- 
tive belongs. Burke cheerfully invokes his "little Horace" to 
call and see his "Maecenas atavis," and "praise this administra- 
" tion of Cavendishes and Rockinghams in ode, and abuse their 
"enemies in epigram." Garrick had arrived in England, from 
his foreign tour, three months before ; his old weaknesses coming 
back as he verged nearer and hearer home, and, for his last 
few days in Paris, disturbing him with visions of Powell. " Fll 
"answer for nothing and nobody in a playhouse," he wrote to 
Colman ; " the devil has put his hoof into it, and he was a deceiver 
" from the beginning of the world. Tell me really what you think 
"of Powell. I am told by several that he will bawl and roar. 
"Ross, I hear, has got reputation in Lear. I don't doubt it. 
" The Town is a facetious gentleman." A few days later, Sterne 
was writing to him from Bath " strange " things of Powell ; and 
when himself on the point of starting for London, he met Beau- 
clerc accidentally, who reported not less strangely of the new trage- 
dian. * ' What, ' all my children ! ' I fear he has taken a wrong 
"turn. Have you advised him?" he wrote again to Colman, 
"Do you see him 1 Is he grateful 1 is he modest 1 Or, is he con- 
" ceited and undone 1 " Nor could the uneasy little great actor 
bring himself to make his journey home, till he had privately sent 
on for anonymous publication at the moment of his arrival, a 
rhymed satirical fable in anticipation and forestalment of expected 
Grub-street attacks, wherein he humbly depicted himself as The 
Sick Monkey, and the whole race of other animals as railing at the 
monkey and his travels. But it was labour all thrown away. 
The finessing and trick were of no use, the hearts of his admirers 
being already securely his without such miserable help. Grub- 
street, when he came, showed no sign of discomposure ; and there 
was but one desire in London and Westminster, to see their 
favourite actor again. 

Let us not be surprised if these intolerable vanities and self- 
distrusts weighed, with contemporaries of his own grade, against 
the better qualities of this delightful man, and pressed down the 
scale. Johnson loved him, but could not always show it for 
hatred of his foppery ; Goldsmith admired him, yet was always 
ready to join in any scheme for his mortification and annoyance. 
Two things had been done in his absence to which he addressed 
himself with great anxiety on his return. The Covent-garden 
actors had established a voluntary benefit-subscription, to relieve 



224 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

their poorer fellows in distress ; and, jealous of such a proposal 
without previous consultation with himself, he was now throwing 
all his energy into a similar fund at 'Drury-lane, which should 
excel and over-rule the other. Without him, too, the club had 
been established ; but as he could not hope to succeed in setting 
up a rival to that, he was anxiously using every possible means to 
secure his own immediate election. Johnson resolutely opposed it. 
Reynolds first conveyed to him Garrick's wish, to the effect that 
he liked the idea of the club excessively, and thought he should 
be of them. " He'll be of us ! " exclaimed Johnson ; " how does 
" he know we will permit him ? The first duke in England has no 
' ' right to hold such language. " To Thrale, the next intercessor, 
he threw out even threats of a blackball ; but this moved the 
worthy brewer to remonstrate warmly, and Johnson, thus hard 
pressed, picked up somewhat recklessly a line of Pope's, as in self- 
defence one might pick up a stone by the way-side, without regard 
to its form or fitness. "Why, sir, I love my little David dearly, 
" better than all or any of his flatterers do ; but surely one ought 
"to sit in a society like ours 

Unelbow'd by a gamester, pimp or player. 

Still the subject was not suffered to let drop, and the next who 
undertook it was Hawkins. "He will disturb us, sir, by his 
' ' buffoonery," was the only and obdurate answer. Garrick saw 
that for the present it was hopeless (though not long after, as will 
be seen, Percy, Chambers, and Colman obtained their election) ; 
and, with his happier tact and really handsome spirit, visited 
Johnson as usual, and seemed to withdraw his claim. But he 
could not conceal his uneasiness. " He would often stop at my 
"gate," says his good-natured friend Hawkins, who lived at 
Twickenham, ' ' in his way to and from Hampton, with messages 
"from Johnson relating to his Shakespeare, then in the press, and 
" ask such questions as these : ' Were you at the club on Monday 
"'night? What did you talk of? Was Johnson there? I 
' ' ' suppose he said something of Davy ? — that Davy was a clever 
fellow in his way, full of convivial pleasantry, but no poet, no 

writer, ha ! ' " Hawkins might hear all this, however, with 
better grace than any one else ; for that worthy magistrate took 
little interest in the club. In a letter to Langton, written shortly 
after, Johnson specially mentions him as remiss in attendance, 
while he admits that he is himself not over diligent. ' ' Dyer, 
" Doctor Nugent, Doctor Goldsmith, and Mr. Reynolds," he adds, 
"are very constant." 

Without its dignified doctorial prefix, Goldsmith's name is now 
seldom mentioned ; even Newbery is careful to preserve it in his 



a c 



ohap. xi.] GOLDSMITH IN PRACTICE AND BURKE IN OFFICE. 225 

memoranda of books lent for the purposes of compilation ; and he 
does not seem, himself, to have again laid it wholly aside. Indeed 
he now made a brief effort, at the suggestion of Reynolds, to make 
positive professional use of it. It was much to have a regular 
calling, said the successful painter ; it gave a man social rank, and 
consideration in the world. Advantage should be taken of the 
growing popularity of the Traveller. To be at once physician and 
man of letters, was the most natural thing possible : there were 
the Arbuthnots and Garths, to say nothing of Cowley himself, 
among the dead ; there were the Akensides, Graingers, Arm- 
strongs, and Smolletts, still among the living ; and where was the 
degree in medicine belonging to any of them, to which the degree 
in poetry or wit had not given more glad acceptance? Out came 
Goldsmith accordingly (in the June of this year, according to the 
account books, which Mr. Prior has published, of Mr. William 
Filby the tailor), in purple silk small-clothes, a handsome scarlet 
roquelaure buttoned close under the chin, and with all the ad- 
ditional importance derivable from a full dress professional wig, a 
sword, and a gold-headed cane. The style of the coat and small- 
clothes maybe presumed from the "four guineas and a half" paid 
for them ; and, as a child with its toy is uneasy without swift 
renewal of the pleasurable excitement, with no less than three 
similar suits, not less expensive, Goldsmith amazed his friends in 
the next six months. The dignity he was obliged to put on with 
these fine clothes, indeed, left him this as their only enjoyment ; 
for he had found it much harder to give up the actual reality of 
his old humble haunts, of his tea at the White-conduit, of his ale- 
house club at Islington, of his nights at the Wrekin or St. Giles's, 
than to blot their innocent but vulgar names from his now gen- 
teeler page. In truth, he would say (in truth was a favourite 
phrase of his, interposes Cooke, who relates the anecdote), one has 
to make vast sacrifices for good company's sake; "for here am I 
"shut out of several places where I used to play the fool very 
"agreeably." Nor is it quite clear that the most moderate ac- 
cession of good company, professionally speaking, rewarded this 
reluctant gravity. The only instance remembered of his practice, 
was in the case of a Mrs. Sidebotham, described as one of his recent 
acquaintance of the better sort ; whose waiting- woman was often 
afterwards known to relate with what a ludicrous assumption of 
dignity he would show off his cloak and his cane, as he strutted 
with his queer little figure, stuck through as with a huge pin by 
his wandering sword, into the sick-room of her mistress. At last 
it one day happened, that, his opinion differing somewhat from the 
apothecary's in attendance, the lady thought her apothecary the 
safer counsellor, and Goldsmith quitted the house in high indigna-. 

L3 



226 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 



tion. He would leave off prescribing for his friends, he said. 
"Do so, my dear Doctor," observed Beauclerc. " Whenever you 




' ' undertake to kill, let it only be your enemies. " Upon the whole 
this seems to have been the close of Doctor Goldsmith's professional 
practice. 



CHAPTER XII. 



NEWS FOR THE CLUB OF VARIOUS KINDS AND FROM 
VARIOUS PLACES. 1765—1766. 

The literary engagements of Doctor Oliver Goldsmith were 
meanwhile going on with Newbery ; and towards the close 
jg. 07 of the year he appears to have completed a compilation of 
a kind somewhat novel to him, induced in all probability 
by his concurrent professional attempts. It was " A Survey of 
" Experimental Philosophy, considered in its present state of 
"improvement;" and Newbery paid him sixty guineas for it. 
He also took great interest at this time in the proceedings of the 
Society of Arts ; and is supposed, from the many small advances 



chap, xil] NEWS FOR THE CLUB. 227 

entered in Newbery's memoranda as made in connection with that 
Society, to have contributed sundry reports and disquisitions on 
its proceedings and affairs, to a new commercial and agricultural 
magazine in which the busy publisher had engaged. It was certainly 
not an idle year with him ; though what remains in proof of his 
employment may be scant and indifferent enough. Johnson's 
blind pensioner, Miss Williams, had for several months been 
getting together a subscription volume of Miscellanies, to which 
Goldsmith had promised a poem ; and she complains that she 
found him always too busy to redeem his promise, and was 
continually put off with a " Leave it to me." JSTor was Johnson, 
who had made like promises, much better. " Well, we'll think. 
" about it," was 7ns form of excuse. With Johnson, in truth, a 
year of most unusual exertion had succeeded his year of visitings, 
and he had at last completed, nine years later than he promised it, 
his edition of Shakespeare. It came out in October, in eight 
octavo volumes ; and was bitterly assailed (nor, it may be 
admitted, without a certain coarse smartness) by Kenrick, who, 
in one of the notes to his attack, coupling "learned doctors of 
li Dublin," with " doctorial dignities of Kheims and Louvain," 
may have meant a sarcasm at Goldsmith. I have indicated the 
latter place as the probable source of his medical degree ; and, 
three months before, Dublin University had conferred a doctorship 
on Johnson, though not until ten years later, when Oxford did 
him similar honour, did he consent to acknowledge the title. He 
had now, I may add, left his Temple chambers, and become 
master of a house in one of the courts in Fleet-street which bore 
his own name ; and where he was able to give lodging on the 
ground floor to Miss Williams, and in the garret to Robert Levett. 
It is remembered as a decent house, with stout old-fashioned 
mahogany furniture. Goldsmith appears meanwhile to have got 
into somewhat better chambers in the same (Garden) court where 
his library staircase chambers stood, which he was able to furnish 
more comfortably ; and to which we shortly trace (by. the help 
of Mr. Filby's bills, and their memoranda of altered suits) the 
presence of a man-servant. 

So passed the year 1765. It was the year in which he had 
first felt any advantage of rank arising from literature ; and it 
closed upon him as he seems to have resolved to make the most 
of his growing importance, and enjoy it in all possible ways. 
Joseph Warton, now preparing for the head mastership of Win- 
chester school, was in London at the opening of 1766, 
and saw something of the society of the club. He had ™. „o 
wished to see Hume ; but Hume, though he had left Paris 
(where he had been secretary of the embassy to Lord Hertford, 



223 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

recalled and sent to Dublin by the new administration), was not yet 
in London. A strange Paris "season" it had been, and odd and 
ill-assorted its assemblage of visitors. There had Sterne, Foote, 
Walpole, and Wilkes, been thrown together at the same dinner-table. 
There had Hume, with his broad Scotch accent, his unintelligible 
French, his imbecile fat face, and his corpulent body, been the 
object of enthusiasm without example, and played the Sultan in 
pantomimic tableaux to the prettiest women of the time. There had 
the author of the Heloise and the Contrat Social, half crazed with 
the passionate admiration which had welcomed his Emile, and 
nattered out of the rest of his wits by the persecution that followed 
it, stalked about with all Paris at his heels, in a caftan and 
Armenian robes, and so enchanted the Scotch historian and sage, 
to whom he seemed a sort of better Socrates, that he had offered 
him a home in England. There was the young painter student 
Barry, writing modest letters on his way to Rome, where William 
and Edmund Burke had subscribed out of their limited means to 
send him. There was the young lion-hunting Boswell, more 
pompous and conceited than ever ; as little laden with law from 
Utrecht, where he has studied since we saw him last, as with 
heroism from Corsica, where he has visited Pascal Paoli, or with 
wit from Ferney, where he has been to see Voltaire ; pushing his 
way into every salon, inflicting himself on every celebrity, and 
ridiculed by all. There, finally, was Horace Walpole, twinged 
with the gout and smarting from political slight, revenging him- 
self with laughter at everybody around him and beyond him : 
now with aspiring Geoffrin and the philosophers, now with blind 
Du Deffand and the wits (" women who violated all the duties 
" of life and gave very pretty suppers ") ; lumping up in the 
same contempt, Wilkes and Foote, Boswell and Sterne ; proclaim- 
ing as impostors in their various ways, alike the Jesuits, the 
methodists, the philosophers, the politicians, the encyclopedists, 
the hypocrite Rousseau, the scoffer Voltaire, the Humes, the 
Lytteltons, the Grenvilles, the atheist tyrant of Prussia, and 
the mountebank of history Mr. Pitt ; and counting a ploughman 
who sows, reads his almanack, and believes the stars but so many 
farthing candles created to prevent his falling into a ditch as he goes 
home at night, a wiser and more rational, and certainly an honester 
being than any of them. Such was the winter society of Paris ; 
let Joseph Warton describe what he saw of literature in London. 
" I only dined with Johnson," he writes to his brother, " who 
" seemed cold and indifferent, and scarce said anything to me. 
" Perhaps he has heard what I said of his Shakespeare, or rather, 
" was offended at what I wrote to him — as he pleases. Of all 
u solemn coxcombs, Goldsmith is the first ; yet sensible ; but 



chap, xii.] NEWS FOR THE CLUB. 229 

" affects to use Johnson's hard words in conversation. We had a 
" Mr. Dyer, who is a scholar and a gentleman. Garrick is entirely 
" off from Johnson, and cannot, he says, forgive him his insinuating 
" that he withheld his old editions, which always were open to him, 
"nor, I suppose, his never mentioning him in all his works." 

What Garrick could with greatest difficulty forgive (Warton's 
allusion is to that passage in the Preface to his edition which 
regrets that he could not collate more copies, since he had not 
found the collectors of those rarities very communicative) was the 
studied absence of any mention of his acting. He had not with- 
held his old plays ; he had been careful, through others, to let 
Johnson understand (too notoriously careless of books, as he was, 
to be safely trusted with rare editions) that the books were at his 
service, and that in his absence abroad the keys of his library had, 
with that view solely, been entrusted to a servant : but this implied 
an overture from Johnson, who thought it Garrick's duty, on the 
contrary, to make overtures to him ; who knew that the other 
course involved acknowledgments he was not prepared to make ; 
and who laughed at nothing so much, on Davy's subsequent loan 
of all his plays to George Steevens, as when he read this year, in 
the first publication of that acute young Mephistophelean critic 
that "Mr. Garrick's zeal would not permit him to withhold 
" anything that might ever so remotely tend to show the perfections 
" of that author who only could have enabled him to display his own." 
Johnson could not have hit off a compliment of such satirical 
nicety ; he must have praised honestly, if at all, and it went 
against his grain to do it. He let out the reason to Boswell eight 
years afterwards. " Garrick has been liberally paid, sir, for 
" anything he has done for Shakespeare. If I should praise him, 
" T should much more praise the nation who paid him." With 
better reason he used to laugh at his managerial preference of the 
player's text (which it is little to the credit of the stage that the 
latest of the great actors, Mr. Macready, should have been the 
first to depart from), and couple it with a doubt if he had ever 
examined one of the original plays from the first scene to the last. 
Nor did Garrick take all this quietly. The king had commanded 
his reappearance in Benedict at the close of the year ; and, though 
he did not think it safe to resume any part of which Powell was in 
possession, except Lusignan, Lothario, and Leon, his popularity 
had again shone forth unabated. It brought back his sense of 
power ; and with it a disposition to use it, even against Johnson. 
The latter had not hesitated, notwithstanding their doubtful rela- 
tions, to seek to "secure an honest prejudice" in favour of his 
book, by formally asking the popular actor's " suffrage" for it on 
its appearance ; yet the suffrage of the popular actor was certainly 



230 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book in. 

exerted against it. That Johnson had not a taste for the finest 
productions of genius, Garrick was soon afterwards very busy to 
explain. With Iago's ingenious mischief, with Hal's gay com- 
pliance in FalstafPs vices, such a critic might be at home ; but 
from Lear in the storm, and from Macbeth on the blasted heath, 
he must be content to be far away : he could, there, but mount 
the high horse, and bluster about imperial tragedy. The tone was 
caught by the actor's friends ; is perceptible throughout his cor- 
respondence ; is in the letters of Warburton, and in such as I 
have quoted of the Wartons ; and gradually, to even Johnson's 
disturbance, passed from society into the press, and became a stock 
theme with the newspapers. Garrick went too far, however, when 
he suffered the libeller Kenrick, not many months after his pub- 
lished attack on Johnson, to exhibit upon his theatre a play called 
Falstaff's Wedding ; and to make another attempt, the following 
season, with a piece called the Widowed Wife. The first was 
damned, and till Shakespeare's fat Jack is forgotten, is not likely to 
be heard of again ; the second passed into oblivion more slowly : 
but Garrick was brought, by both, into personal relations with the 
writer which he lived to have reason to deplore. Meanwhile, and 
for some little time to come, what Joseph Warton had written was 
but too true. Garrick and Johnson were entirely off ; and in a 
certain gloom of spirits, and disquietude of health, which were 
just now stealing over the latter, even his interest in the stage 
appeared to have passed away. 

" I think, Mr. Johnson," said Goldsmith, as they sat talking 
together one evening in February, "you don't go near the theatres 
"now. You give yourself no more concern about a new play, 
"than if you had never had anything to do with the stage." 
Johnson avoided the question, and his friend shifted the subject. 
He spoke of the public claim and expectation that the author of 
Irene should give them " something in some other way ;" on which 
Johnson began to talk of making verses, and said (very truly) that 
the great difficulty was to know when you had made good ones. 
He remarked that he had once written, in one day, a hundred 
lines of the Vanity of Human Wishes ; and turning quickly to 
Goldsmith, added, "Doctor, I am not quite idle ; I made one line 
"t'other day ; but I made no more." " Let us hear it," said the 
other laughing ; "we'll put a bad one to it." " jNo, sir," replied 
Johnson, "I have forgot it." 

Boswell was the reporter of this conversation. He had arrived 
from Paris a few days before, bringing with him Rousseau's old 
servant maid, Mademoiselle le Vasseur. " She's very homely and 
"very awkward," says Hume, "but more talked of than the 
"Princess of Morocco or the Countess of Egmont, on account of 



chap, xii.] NEWS FOR THE CLUB. 231 

" her fidelity and attachment towards him. His very dog, who is 
" no better than a collie, has a name and reputation in the world ! " 
It was enough for Boswell, who clung to any rag of celebrity ; nor, 
remembering how the ancient widow of Cicero and Sallust had 
seduced a silly young patrician into thinking that her close con- 
nection with genius must have given her the secret of it, were 
Hume and Walpole quite secure of even the honour of the young 
Scotch escort of the ugly old Frenchwoman. They arrived safely 
and virtuously, notwithstanding ; and Boswell straightway went 
to Johnson, whom, not a little to his discomfort, he found put by 
his doctors on a water regimen. Though they supped twice at the 
Mitre, it was not as in the old social time. On the night of the 
conversation just given, being then on the eve of his return to 
Scotland, he had taken Goldsmith with him to call again on John- 
son, "with the hope of prevailing on him to sup with us at the 
' ' Mitre. " JJut they found him indisposed, and resolved not to go 
abroad. "Gome then," said Goldsmith gaily, " we will not go to 
" the Mitre to-night, since we cannot have the big man with us." 
Whereupon the big man, laughing at the jovial Irish phrase, 
called for a bottle of port ; of which, adds Boswell, " Goldsmith 
"and I partook, while our friend, now a water drinker, sat by us." 
One does not discover, in such anecdotes as these, what honest 
though somewhat dry Joe Warton calls Goldsmith's solemn cox- 
combry. But beside Boswell's effulgence in that kind, any lesser 
light could hardly hope to shine. Even to the great commoner 
himself, at whose unapproachable seclusion all London had so 
lately been amazed, and who at length, with little abatement of 
the haughty mystery, had reappeared in the House of Commons, was 
" Jemmy " now resolved, before leaving London, to force his way. 
Corsican Paoli was the card to play for this mighty Pam ; and 
already he had sent mysterious intimation to Pitt of certain views 
of the struggling patriot, of the illustrious Paoli, which he desired 
to communicate to ' ' the prime minister of the brave, the secretary 
"of freedom and of spirit." Wonder reigned at the club when 
they found the interview granted, and inextinguishable laughter 
when they heard of the interview itself. Profiting by Rousseau's 
Armenian example, Boswell went in Corsican robes. " He came 
" in the Corsican dress," says Lord Buchan, who was present ; 
" and Mr. Pitt smiled ; but received him very graciously, in his 
" pompous manner." It was an advantage the young Scot followed 
up, very soon inflicting on Pitt a brief history of himself in an 
elaborate epistle. He described his general love of great people, 
and how that Mr. Pitt's character in particular had filled many of 
his best hours with what he oddly called "that noble admiration 
" which a disinterested soul can enjoy in the bower of philosophy." 



232 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

He told him lie was going to publish an account of Corsica, and of 
Paoli's gallant efforts against the tyrant Genoese ; added that to 
please his father he had himself studied law, and was now fairly 
entered to the bar ; and concluded thus. "I begin to like it. I can 
" labour hard ; I feel myself coming forward, and I hope to be useful 
" to my country. Could you find time to honour me now and then vjith 
" a letter ?" To no wiser man than this, it should be always kept in 
mind, posterity became chiefly indebted for its laugh at Goldsmith's 
literary vanities, social absurdities, and so-called self-important ways. 

With Pitt's reappearance had meanwhile been connected another 
event of not less mighty consequence. On the day (the 14th 
of January) when he rose to support Conway's repeal of the 
American stamp-act, and to resist his accompanying admission that 
such an act was not void in itself ; when, in answer to Nugent's 
furious denunciation of rebellious colonies, he rejoiced that 
Massachusetts had resisted, and affirmed that colonies unrepresented 
could not be taxed by parliament ; — Burke took his seat, by an 
arrangement with Lord Verney, for Wendover borough. A fort- 
night later he made his first speech, and divided the admiration of 
the house with Pitt himself, Afterwards, and with increased effect, 
he spoke again ; Pitt praising him, and telling his friends to set 
proper value on the "acquisition they had made ;" and when the 
struggle for the repeal was over, after the last victorious division 
on the memorable morning of the 22nd of February, and Pitt and 
Conway came out amid the huzzaings of the crowded lobby, where 
the leading merchants of the kingdom whom this great question 
so vitally affected had till "almost a winter's return of light" 
tremblingly awaited the decision, Burke stood at their side, and 
received share of the same shouts and benedictions. 

Extraordinary news for the club, all this ; and again the excel- 
lent Hawkins is in a state of wonder. " Sir," exclaimed Johnson, 
" there is no wonder at all. We who know Mr. Burke, know that 
* • he will be one of the first men in the country. " But he had 
regrets with which to sober this admission. He disliked the 
Rockingham party, and was zealous for more strict attendance at 
the club. " We have the loss of Burke's company," he complained 
to Langton, "since he has been engaged in the public business." 
Yet he cannot help adding (it was the first letter he had written to 
Langton from his new study in Johnson's-court, which he thinks 
" looks very pretty" about him) that it is well so great a man by 
nature as Burke, should be expected soon to attain civil greatness. 
" He has gained more reputation than perhaps any man at his 
"his first appearance ever gained before. His speeches have filled 
"the town with wonder." 

Ten days after the date of this letter came out an advertisement 






chap, xii.] NEWS FOR THE CLUB. 233 

in the St. James's Chronicle, which affected the town with neither 
wonder nor curiosity, though not without matter for both to the 
members of the club. " In a few days will be published," it said, 
"in two volumes, twelves, price six shillings bound, or five 
" shillings sewed, The Vicar of Wakefield. A tale, supposed to be 
"written by himself. Printed for F. Newbery at the Crown in 
"Paternoster Row." This was the manuscript story sold to 
Newbery's nephew fifteen months before ; and it seems impossible 
satisfactorily to account for the bookseller's delay. Johnson says 
that not till now had the Traveller's success made the publication 
worth while ; but eight months were passed, even now, since the 
Traveller had reached its fourth edition. We are left to conjecture ; 
and the most likely supposition will probably be, that the delay was 
consequent on business arrangements between the younger and the 
elder Newbery. Goldsmith had certainly not claimed the interval 
for any purpose of retouching his work ; and can hardly have failed 
to desire speedy publication, for what had been to him a labour of 
love as rare as the Traveller itself. But the elder Newbery may 
have interposed some claim to a property in the novel, and objected 
to its appearance contemporaneously with the Traveller. He often 
took part in this way in his nephew's affairs ; and thus, for a 
translation of a French book on philosophy which the nephew 
published after the Vicar, and which Goldsmith at this very time 
was labouring at, we find, from the summer account handed in by 
the elder Newbery, that the latter had himself provided the 
payment. He gave Goldsmith twenty pounds for it ; and had also 
advanced him, at about the time when the Vicar was put in hand 
(it was printed at Salisbury, and was nearly three months in 
passing through the press), the sum of eleven guineas on his own 
promissory note. The impression of a common interest between 
the booksellers is confirmed by what I find appended to all Mr. 
Francis Newbery's advertisements of the novel in the various 
papers of the day ("of whom may be had The Traveller, or a 
" prospect of society, a poem by Doctor Goldsmith. Price Is. 6d") ; 
and it seems further to strengthen the surmise of Mr. John 
Newbery's connection with the book, that he is himself niched 
into it. He is introduced as the philanthropic bookseller in 
St. Paul's-churchyard, who had written so many little books for 
children ("he called himself their friend, but he was the friend of 
"all mankind") : and as having published for the Vicar against 
the deuterogamists of the age. 

So let the worthy bookseller, whose philanthropy was always 
under watchful care of his prudence, continue to live with the 
Whistonian controversy ; for the good Doctor Primrose, that 
courageous monogamist, has made both immortal. 



234 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 



CHAPTEE XIII. 



THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 1766. 

No book -upon record lias obtained a wider popularity than the 
Vicar of Wakefield, and none is more likely to endure. 
a,/ go One who, on the day of its appearance, had not left the 
nursery, but who grew to be a popular poet and a man of 
fine wit, and who happily still survives with the experience of the 
seventy years over which his pleasures of memory extend, 
remarked lately to the present writer, that, of all the books which, 
through the fitful changes of three generations, he had seen rise 
and fall, the charm of the Vicar of Wakefield had alone continued 
as at first ; and, could he revisit the world after an interval of 
many more generations, he should as surely look to find it undi- 
minished. Such is the reward of simplicity and truth, and of not 
overstepping the modesty of nature. 

It is not necessary that any critical judgment should be here 
gone into, of the merits or the defects of this charming tale. 
Every one is familiar with Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. We 
read it in youth and in age. We return to it, as Walter Scott 
has said, again and again ; " and we bless the memory of an 
"author who contrives so well to reconcile us to human nature." 
With its ease of style, its turns of thought so whimsical yet wise, 
and the humour and wit which sparkle freshly through its 
narrative, we have all of us profitably amused the idle or the 
vacant hour ; from year to year we have had its tender or mirthful 
incidents, its forms so homely in their beauty, its pathos and 
its comedy, given back to us from the canvas of our Wilkies, 
Newtons, and Stothards, our Leslies, Maclises, and Mulreadys : 
but not in those graces of style, or even in that home-cherished 
gallery of familiar faces, can the secret of its extraordinary fasci- 
nation be said to consist. It lies nearer the heart. A some- 
thing which has found its way there ; which, while it amused, has 
made us happier ; which, gently inweaving itself with our habits 
of thought, has increased our good-humour and charity ; which, 
insensibly it may be, has corrected wilful impatiences of temper, 
and made the world's daily accidents easier and kinder to us all : 
somewhat thus should be expressed, I think, the charm of the 
Vicar of Wakefield. It is our first pure example of the simple 
domestic novel. Though wide as it was various, and most minutely 



chap, xin.] THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 235 

as well as broadly marked with, passion, incident, and character, 
the field selected by Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett for the 
exercise of their genius and display of their powers, had hardly 
included this. Nor is it likely that Goldsmith, would himself have 
chosen it, if his leading object had been to write a book. Rather 
as a refuge from the writing of books was this book undertaken. 
Simple to very baldness are the materials employed ; — but he threw 
into the midst of them his own nature ; his actual experience ; the 
suffering, discipline, and sweet emotion, of his chequered life ; and 
so made them a lesson and a delight to all men. 

Good predominant over evil, is briefly the purpose and moral of 
the little story. It is designed to show us that patience in suffer- 
ing, that persevering reliance on the providence of God, that quiet 
labour, cheerful endeavour, and an indulgent forgiveness of the 
faults and infirmities of others, are the easy and certain means of 
pleasure in this world, and of turning pain to noble uses. It is 
designed to show us that the heroism and self-denial needed for 
the duties of life, are not of the superhuman sort ; that they may 
co-exist with many follies, with some simple weaknesses, with many 
harmless vanities ; and that in the improvement of" mankind, near 
and remote, in its progress through worldly content to final happi- 
ness, the humblest of men have their place assigned them, and 
their part allotted them to play. 

There had been, in light amusing fiction, no such scene as that 
where Doctor Primrose, surrounded by the mocking felons of the 
gaol into which his villanous creditor has thrown him, finds in even 
those wretched outcasts a common nature to appeal to, minds to 
instruct, sympathies to bring back to virtue, souls to restore and 
save. " In less than a fortnight I had formed them into some- 
" thing social and humane." Into how many hearts may this 
have planted a desire which had yet become no man's care ! Not 
yet had Howard turned his thoughts to the prison, Romilly was 
but a boy of nine years old, and Elizabeth Fry had not been born. 
In Goldsmith's day, as for centuries before it, the gaol only existed 
as the portal to the gallows ; it was crime's high-school, where 
law presided over the science of law-breaking, and did its best to 
spread guilt abroad. This prison, argues Doctor Primrose, makes 
men guilty where it does not find them so ; it encloses wretches 
for the commission of one crime, and returns them, if returned 
alive, fitted for the perpetration of thousands. With what conse- 
quence ? New vices call for fresh restraints ; " penal laws, which 
" are in the hands of the rich, are laid upon the poor ;" and all our 
paltriest possessions are hung round with gibbets. It scares men 
now to be told of what no man then took heed. Deliberate and 
foul murders were committed by the State. It was but four years 



236 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

after this that the government which had reduced a young wife to 
beggary by pressing her husband to sea, sentenced her to death for 
entering a draper's shop in Ludgate-hill, taking some coarse linen 
off the counter, and laying it down again as the shopman gazed at 
her ; listened unmoved to a defence which might have penetrated 
stone, that inasmuch, since her husband was stolen from her, she 
had had no bed to lie upon, nothing to clothe her two baby 
children with, nothing to give them to eat, " perhaps she might 
" have done something wrong, for she hardly knew what she did;" 
and finally sent her to Tyburn, with her infant sucking at her 
breast. 'Not without reason did Horace Walpole call the country 
"a shambles." Hardly a Monday passed that was not Black 
Monday at Newgate. An execution came round as regularly as 
any other weekly show ; and when it was that " shocking sight of 
"fifteen men executed," whereof Boswell makes more than one unc- 
tuous mention, the interest was of course the greater. Men, not 
otherwise hardened, found here a debasing delight. George Selwyn 
passed as much time at Tyburn as at White's ; and Mr. Boswell 
had a special suit of execution-black, to make a decent appearance 
near the scaffold. Not uncalled for, therefore, though solitary and 
as yet unheeded, was the warning of the good Doctor Primrose. 
Nay, not uncalled for is it now, though ninety years have passed. 
Do not, he said, draw the cords of society so hard, that a con- 
vulsion must come to burst them ; do not cut away wretches as 
useless before you have tried their utility ; make law the pro- 
tector, not the tyrant of the people. You will then find that 
creatures, whose souls are held as dross, want only the hand of a 
refiner ; and that " very little blood -will serve to cement our 
" security." \ 

Resemblances have been found," and may be admitted to exist, 
between the reverend Charles Primrose and the reverend Abraham 
Adams. They arose from kindred genius ; and from the manly 
habit which Fielding and Goldsmith shared, of discerning what 
was good and beautiful in the homeliest aspects of humanity. In 
the parson's saddle-bag of sermons would hardly have been found 
this prison-sermon of the vicar ; and there was in Mr. Adams not 
only a capacity for beef and pudding, but for beating and being 
beaten, which would ill have consisted with the simple dignity of 
Doctor Primrose. But unquestionable learning, unsuspecting 
simplicity, amusing traits of credulity and pedantry, and a most 
Christian purity and benevolence of heart, are common to both 
these master-pieces of English fiction ; and are, in each, with such 
exquisite touch discriminated, as to leave no possible doubt of the 
originality of either. Anything like the charge of imitation is 
preposterous. Fielding's friend, Young, sat for the parson, as in 



chap, xiii.] THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 237 

Goldsmith's father, Charles, we have seen the original of the vicar ; 
and as long as nature pleases to imitate herself, will such simple- 
hearted spirits reveal kindred with each other. At the same time 
and with peculiar mastery, art vindicates also in such cases her 
power and skill ; and the general truth of resemblance is, after all, 
perceived to be much less striking than the local accidents of 
difference. Does it not well nigh seem incredible, indeed, com- 
paring the tone of language and incident in the two stories, that a 
space of twenty years should have comprised Joseph Andrews and 
the Vicar of Wakefield. 

Little, it must be confessed, had past experience in fiction, from 
the days of De Foe to these of Smollett, prepared the age for a 
simple novel of English domestic life. Least of all for that 
picture, so purely and delicately shaded, of the vicar, in his 
character of pastor, parent, and husband ; of his helpmate, with 
her motherly cunning and housewifely prudence, loving and 
respecting him, "but at the dictates of maternal vanity counter- 
" plotting his wisest schemes ;" of both, with their children 
around them, their quiet labour and domestic happiness, — -which 
Walter Scott declares to be without a parallel, in all his novel- 
reading, as a fire-side picture of perfect beauty. It may be freely 
admitted that there are many grave faults, many improbabilities, 
some even palpable absurdities, in the construction of the story. 
Goldsmith knew this. ' ' There are an hundred faults in this 
"Thing," he said, in his brief advertisement to it; "and an 
| ' hundred things might be said to prove them beauties. But it 
" is needless." (His meaning is, that to make beauties out of faults, 
be the proof ever so successful, does not mend the matter. ) "A 
B ' book may be amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very 
" dull without a single absurdity." He rested, with well grounded 
faith, on the vital reality of his characters. It is wonderful with 
what nice variety the family likeness of each Primrose is preserved, 
and how little the defects of the story interfere with any of 
them. Cannot one see that there is a propriety, an eternal 
fitness, in even the historical family picture 1 Those rosy Flam- 
borough girls, who do nothing but flaunt in red top-knots, hunt 
the slipper, burn nuts, play tricks, dance country dances, and 
scream with laughter ; who have not the least idea of high life or 
high-lived company, or such fashionable topics as pictures, taste, 
Shakespeare, and the musical-glasses, — how should it be possible 
for them to have any other notion or desire than just to be painted 
in their red top-knots, each holding an orange ? But Olivia 
Primrose ! who, to her mother's knowledge, has a great deal to say 
upon every subject, and is very well skilled in controversy ; who 
has read Thwackum and Square's disputes in Tom Jones, the 



238 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

argument of man Friday and his master in Robinson Crusoe, and 
the dialogues in Religious Courtship, — is it not somehow quite as 
much in character with the flighty vivacity of this ambitious little 
Livy, that she should wish to be drawn as an Amazon sitting upon 
a bank of flowers, dressed in a green Joseph richly laced with gold, 
a whip in her hand, and the young squire as Alexander the Great 
lying captive at her feet ; as it certainly suits the more sober 
simplicity and prudent good sense of her sister Sophy, to figure in 
the same composition as a shepherdess, with as many sheep as the 
painter can put in for nothing ? Mrs. Deborah Primrose triumph- 
ing in her lamb's-wool and gooseberry-wine, and claiming to be repre- 
sented as the Mother of Love with plenty of diamonds in her hair and 
stomacher, is at first a little startling ; but it admits of an excellent 
introduction of honest old Dick and chubby little Bill, by way of 
Cupids ; and to what conceivable creature so much in need as 
Venus of conversion to monogamy, could the Vicar " in his gown 
" and band" have presented his books on the Whistonian contro- 
versy ? There remains only Moses to complete the master-piece ; 
and is not his hat and white feather typical of both his arguments 
and his bargains, his sale of Dobbin the colt and his purchase of 
the gross of green spectacles ? The simple, credulous, generous, 
inoffensive family habits, are common to all : but in each a 
separate identity is yet as broadly marked, as in the Amazon, the 
Venus, or the Shepherdess, of the immortal family picture. 

Still, from all that touches and diverts us in these harmless 
vanities of the delightful group, we return to the primal source of 
what has given this glorious little story its unequalled popularity. 
It is not that we enjoy a secret charm of assumed superiority over 
the credulity and simplicity of almost every actor in it, but that 
the better secret is laid open to us of the real superiority of such 
credulous ways over much of what the world mistakes for its 
shrewdest wisdom. It is not simply that a happy fireside is 
depicted there, but that it is one over which calamity and sorrow 
can only cast the most temporary shade. In his deepest distress, 
the Vicar has but to remember how much kinder Heaven is to us 
than we are to ourselves, and how few are the misfortunes of 
nature's making, to recover his cheerful patience. There never 
was a book in which indulgence and charity made virtue look so 
lustrous. Nobody is straight-laced ; if we except Miss Carolina 
Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs, whose pretensions are summed up in 
Burchell's noble monosyllable. " Virtue, my dear Lady Blarney, 
"virtue is worth any price ; but where is that to be found?" 
" Fudge." When worldly reverses visit the good Doctor Primrose, 
they are of less account than the equanimity they cannot deprive 
him of ; than the belief in good to which they only give wider 



jhap. xiii.] THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 239 

scope ; than the happiness which even in its worldliest sense they 
ultimately strengthen, by enlarged activity and increased necessity 
for labour. It is only when struck through the sides of his 
children, that for an instant his faith gives way. Most lovely is 
the pathos of that scene ; so briefly and beautifully told. The 
little family at night are gathered round a charming tire, telling 
stories of the past, laying schemes for the future, and listening to 
Moses's thoughtful opinion of matters and things in general, to 
the effect that all things, in his judgment, go on very well, and 
that he has just been thinking, when sister Livy is married to 
Farmer Williams, they'll get the loan of his cyder-press and 
brewing-tubs for nothing. The best gooseberry-wine has been this 
night much in request. " Let us have one bottle more, Deborah, 
"my life," says the Vicar ; " and Moses, give us a good song. . . 
" But where is my darling Olivia ? " The terrible truth soon and 
suddenly appears, and the old man, struck to the heart, cannot 
help cursing the seducer ; but Moses is mindful of happier teach- 
ing, and with a loving simplicity rebukes his father. ' ' I did not 
" curse him, child, did I % " " Indeed, sir, you did ; you curst 
"him twice." "Then may Heaven forgive me and him if I did." 
Charity resumes its place in his heart ; with forgiveness, happiness 
half visits him again ; by kindly patience, even Deborah's 
reproaches are subdued and stayed ; he takes back with most 
affecting tenderness his penitent child ; and the voices of all his 
children are heard once more in their simple concert on the honey- 
suckle bank. We feel that it is better than cursing : and are even 
content that the rascally young squire should have time and hope 
for a sort of shabby repentance, and be allowed the intermediate 
comfort (it seems after all, one hardly knows why or wherefore, the 
most appropriate thing he can do) of "blowing the French horn." 
Mr. Abraham Adams has infinite claims on respect and love, nor 
ever to be forgotten are his groans over Wilson's worldly narrative, 
his sermon on vanity, his manuscript JEschylus, his noble inde- 
pendence to Lady Booby, and his grand rebuke to Peter Bounce : 
but he is put to no such trial as this of Doctor Primrose, which 
sets before us, with such blended grandeur, simplicity, and pathos, 
the Christian heroism of the loving father, and forgiving ambassador 
of God to man. 

It was not an age of particular earnestness, that Hume and 
Walpole age : but no one can be in earnest himself without in 
some degree affecting others. "I remember a passage in the 
" Vicar of Wakefield," said Johnson, a few years after its author's 
death, " which Goldsmith was afterwards fool enough to expunge. 
" I do not love a man ivho is zealous for nothing." The words 
were little, since the feeling was retained ; for the very basis of 



240 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

the little tale was a sincerity and zeal for many things. This 
indeed it was, which, while all the world were admiring it for its 
mirth and sweetness, its bright and happy pictures, its simultaneous 
movement of the springs of laughter and tears, gave it a rarer 
value to a more select audience, and connected it with not the 
least memorable anecdote of modern literary history. It had 
been published little more than four years, when two Germans 
whose names became afterwards world-famous, one a student at 
that time in his twentieth, the other a graduate in his twenty- 
fifth year, met in the city of Strasburg. The younger, Johann 
Wolfgang Goethe, a law-scholar of the University with a passion 
for literature, sought knowledge from the elder, Johann Gottfried 
Herder, for the course on which he was moved to enter. Herder, 
a severe and masterly though somewhat cynical critic, laughed at 
the likings of the young aspirant, and roused him to other 
aspiration. Producing a German translation of the Vicar of 
Wakefield, he read it out aloud to Goethe in a manner which was 
peculiar to him ; and, as the incidents of the little story came 
forth in his serious simple voice, in one unmoved unaltering tone 
("just as if nothing of it was present before him, but all was 
"only historical ; as if the shadows of this poetical creation did 
" not affect him in a life-like manner, but only glided gently by"), 
a new ideal of letters and of life arose in the mind of the listener. 
Years passed on ; and while that younger student raised up and 
re-established the literature of his country, and came at last, in 
his prime and in his age, to be acknowledged for the wisest of 
modern men, he never ceased throughout to confess what he owed 
to those old evenings at Strasburg. The strength which can 
conquer circumstance ; the happy wisdom of irony which elevates 
itself above every object, above fortune and misfortune, good and 
evil, death and life, and attains to the possession of a poetical 
world ; first visited Goethe in the tone with which Goldsmith's 
tale is told. The fiction became to him life's first reality ; in 
country clergymen of Drusenheim, there started up vicars of 
Wakefield ; for Olivias and Sophias of Alsace, first love fluttered 
at his heart ; — and at every stage of his illustrious after- career, 
its impression still vividly recurred to him. He remembered it, 
when, at the height of his worldly honour and success, he made 
his written life ( Wahrheit und Dichtung) record what a blessing it 
had been to him ; he had not forgotten it, when, some twenty 
years ago, standing at the age of eighty-one on the very brink 
of the grave, he told a friend that in the decisive moment of 
mental development the Vicar of Wakefield had formed his 
education, and that he had recently, with unabated delight, "read 
" the charming book again from beginning to end, not a little 



chap, xiir.] THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 241 

" affected by tlie lively recollection " of how much he had been 
indebted to the author seventy years before. 

Goldsmith was unconscious of this exalted tribute. He died 
as ignorant of Herder's friendly criticism, as of the gratitude of 
Goethe. The little book silently forced its way. I find, upon 
examination of the periodicals of the day, that no noise was made 
about it, no trumpets were blown for it. The St James's Chronicle 
did not condescend to notice its appearance, and the Monthly 
Review confessed frankly that nothing was to be made of it. The 
better sort of newspapers as well as the more dignified reviews 
contemptuously left it to the patronage of Lloyd's Evening Post, the 
London Chronicle, and journals of that class ; which simply 
informed their readers that a new novel, called the Vicar of 
Wakefield, had been published, that " the Editor is Doctor Gold- 
" smith, who has affixed his name to an introductory advertise- 
I ment," and that such and such were the incidents of the story. 
Several columns of the Evening Post and the Chronicle, between 
the dates of March and April, were filled in this way with 
bald recital of the plot ; and with such extracts as the prison- 
scene, the account of the Primroses, and the brief episode of 
Matilda : but, in the way of praise or of criticism, not a word was 
said. Johnson, as T have remarked, took little interest in the 
story at any time but as the means of getting so much money for its 
author ; and believing that " Harry Fielden " (as he called him) 
knew nothing but the shell of life, may be excused for thinking 
the Vicar a, "mere fanciful performance." It would seem that 
none of the club indeed, excepting Burke, cared much about it : 
and one may read, in the French letters of the time, how perfectly 
Madame Biccoboni agrees with her friend Garrick as to the little 
to be learned from it ; and how surprised the lively lady is that 
the Burkes should have found it pathetic, or be able to approve 
of its arguments in favour of thieves and outcasts. Admiration, 
nevertheless, gathered slowly and steadily around it ; a second 
edition appeared on the 5th of June, and a third on the 25th 
of August ; it reached its sixth edition in the year of its writer's 
death ; and he had lived to see it translated into several con- 
tinental languages, though not to know that the little story had 
been the chief consolation of a foreign prince in his English exile, 
and certainly not to receive from the booksellers the least addition 
to that original sorry payment, which Johnson himself thought 
"accidentally" less than it ought to have been. In the very 
month when the second edition of the Vicar of Wakefield was 
issued, a bill which Oliver Goldsmith had drawn upon Newbery, 
for fifteen guineas, was returned dishonoured. 



242 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LTFE AND TIMES. [book in. | f 



CHAPTEE XIV. 



OLD DRUDGERY, AND A NEW VENTURE DAWNING. 1766. 

But if solid rewards seldom waited on even the happiest of 

Goldsmith's achievements, he never now lost coinage and 
1^66 
jp' go hope, or showed signs of yielding in the struggle. He had 

always his accustomed resource, and went uncomplainingly 
to the old drudgery. Payne the bookseller gave him ten guineas 
for compiling a duodecimo volume of " Poems for Young Ladies. 
"In three parts : Devotional, Moral, and Entertaining." It was a f 
respectable selection of pieces, chiefly from Parnell, Pope, Thomson, 
Addison, and Collins ; with additions of less importance from less 
eminent hands, and some occasional verses which he supposed to | J 
be his friend Robert Nugent's, but which were really written 
by Lord Lyttelton. It has been assumed to be in this book 
"for young ladies" that two objectionable pieces by Prior were 
inserted ; but the statement, though sanctioned by Percy, is 
incorrect. It was in a more extensive compilation of Beauties of 
English Poetry Selected, published in the following year, and for 
the gathering together of which Griffin the bookseller gave him 
•fifty pounds, that he made the questionable choice of the "Ladle" 
and " Hans Carvel," which for once interdicted from general 
reading a book with his name upon its title-page. This was 
unlucky : for the selection in other respects, making allowance for 
a limited acquaintance with the earlier English poets, was a 
reasonably good one ; and in this, as well as in its preface and 
brief notices of the pieces quoted, though without any claim to 
originality or critical depth, was not undeserving of what he 
claimed generally for books of the kind as entitling them to fair 
reward. He used to point to them as illustrating, better than 
any other kind of compilations, " the art of profession " in author- 
ship. "Judgment," he said, "is to be paid for in such selections; 
' ' and a man may be twenty years of his life cultivating his 
"judgment." But he has also, with its help, to be mindful of 
changes in the public taste, to which he may himself have con- 
tributed. Nothing is more frequent than these, and few things 
so sudden. Staid wives will shrink with abhorrence in their 
fortieth autumn, from what they read with delight in their 
twentieth summer ; and it was now even less than twenty years 
since that faultless "family expositor," Doctor Doddridge (as we 



chap, xiv.] OLD DRUDGERY, AND A NEW VENTURE. 243 

learn from the letters of the holy divine), thought it no sin to 
read the Wife of Bath's Tale to young Nancy Moore, and take 
his share in the laugh it raised. Doctor Johnson himself had not 
forgotten those habits and ways of his youth ; and amazed Boswell, 
some ten years later, by asserting that Prior was a lady's book, and 
that no lady was ashamed to have it standing in her library. 

The Doctor could hardly have taken part in the present luckless 
selection, however, since through all the summer and autumn months 
of the year he had withdrawn from his old haunts and friends, 
and taken refuge with the Thrales. For the latter, happening to 
visit him in Johnson' s-court one day at the close of spring, found 
him on his knees in such a passion of morbid melancholy, beseech- 
ing God to continue to him the use of his understanding, and 
proclaiming such sins of which he supposed himself guilty, that 
poor sober solid Thrale was fain to "lift up one hand to shut his 
"mouth," and the worthy pair bore him off, by a sort of kindly 
force, to their hospitable home. With cheerfulness, health returned 
after some few months ; he passed a portion of the summer with 
them at Brighton ; and from that time, says Murphy, Johnson 
became almost resident in the family. " He went occasionally to 
"the club in Gerrard-street, but his head-quarters were fixed at 
"Streatham." Goldsmith had rightly foreseen how ill things 
were going with him, when not even a new play could induce him 
to attend the theatre. 

In his own attendance at the theatre he was just now more 
zealous than ever, and had doubtless "assisted" at some recent 
memorable nights there. When all the world went to see Rousseau, 
for example, including the King and Queen ; when their majesties, 
though Garrick exhibited all his powers in Lusignan and Lord 
Chalkstone, looked more at the philosopher than the player ; and 
when poor Mrs. Garrick, who had exalted him on a seat in her 
box (rewarded for her pains by his laughing at Lusignan and crying 
at Lord Chalkstone, not understanding a word of either), held 
him back by the skirts of his coat all night, in continual terror 
that " the recluse philosopher " would tumble over the front of 
the box into the pit, from his eager anxiety to show himself,. — 
Goldsmith could hardly have stayed away. Nor is he likely to 
have been absent when the Drury-lane players (with many of 
whom, especially Mr. and Mrs. Yates, he had now formed acquain- 
tance) made the great rally for their rival fund ; and, in defiance 
of his outlawry, Wilkes unexpectedly showed himself in the 
theatre, more bent on seeing Garrick's Kitely than keeping faith 
with the ministry, to whom, through Burke, he had the day before 
promised to go back to Paris more secretly and quickly than he 
had come to London. Least of all could Goldsmith have been 

m2 



244 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

absent when th\e last new comedy was played, of which all the j 
town was talking still ; and which seems to have this year turned 
his thoughts for the first time to the theatre, with serious intention 
to try his own fortune there. 

The Clandestine Marriage, the great success of the year, and for 
the strength and variety of its character deservedly so, had been 
the joint work of Colnian and Garrick ; whose respective shares in ; 
its authorship have been much disputed, but now seem clear and 
ascertainable enough. The idea of the comedy originated with j 
Colnian, as he was looking at the first plate in Hogarth's immortal 
series of Marriage a la Mode ; but he admits that it was Garrick 
who, on being taken into counsel, suggested that important 
alteration of Hogarth's "proud lord" into an amiable old ruin of 
a fop, descending to pin his noble decayed skirts to the frock of a 
tradesman's daughter, but still aspiring to the hopes and submit- 
ting to the toils of conquest, which gave to the stage its favourite 
Lord Ogleby. These leading ideas determined on, rough hints for 
the construction and conduct of the plot, of which Colman's was 
made public by his son three-and-thirty years ago, and Garrick's 
did not see the light till the other day, were exchanged between the 
friends ; and from these it is manifest that, in addition to what 
Colman in his letters somewhat scantily admits to have been 
Garrick's contributions, — namely, the first suggestion of Lord 
Ogleby, his opening levee scene, and the fifth act which he closes 
with such handsome gallantry, — -the practised actor had mapped 
out more clearly than Colman, though he may not have written 
all, the other principal scenes in which his chosen character was 
concerned. What he submitted for the interview where the 
antiquated fop supposes Fanny to have fallen in love with him, 
will not only exhibit this, but hereafter help us to understand some 
disagreements between himself and Goldsmith. "Bride," he 
remarks, putting the actor always in place of the character, 
resolves to open her heart to Garrick, and try to bring him over 
to forgive thern. ' l O'Brien consents, and leaves her upon seeing 
"Garrick come smiling along. Enter Garrick, he smiling, and 
" taking every word from the girl as love to himself. She 
"hesitates ; faulters ; which confirms him more and more, till at 
"last she is obliged to go off abruptly, and dare not discover what 
" she intended, which is now demonstration to Garrick, who is left 
" alone, and may show himself in all the glory of his character mj 
" a soliloquy of vanity. He resolves to have the girl, and break 
c ' the hearts of the rest of the female world. " Powell had to 
replace O'Brien, however, and King was substituted for Garrick, 
before the play was acted ; and out of the latter circumstance 
arose a coolness between the friends which will reappear in this 



ohap. xiv.] OLD DRUDGERY, AND A NEW VENTURE. 245 

narrative. Colman thought Garrick's surrender of Lord Ogleby a 
capricious forfeiture of promise ; but though an exception to his 
previous withdrawal from all new parts was certainly at first intended 
in this case, he exercised a sound discretion in changing that 
purpose. The new character was in truth little more than an 
enrichment of one of his own farces, assisted by a farce of his 
friend Townley's ; and he could himself but have made Lord 
Ogleby an improved Lord Chalkstone. It was better left to 
an entirely new representative, and King justified his choice. 
Colman's sense of injury was, nevertheless, kept carefully alive by 
good-natured friends ; and when Garrick, some time after the 
play's production, and while the town were still crowding to see it, 
wrote in triumph to his coadjutor of the difficulties of the rival 
house (" The ministry all to pieces ! Pitt, they say, and a new 
" arrangement. Beard and Co. going positively to sell their patent 
" for sixty thousand pounds. 'Tis true ; but, mum. We have not 
"yet discovered the purchasers. When I know, you shall know : 
"there will be the devil to do"), he little imagined what notions he 
was then infusing into Colman's busy discontented brain. 

The unexampled success of their comedy had seemed in truth to 
have as thoroughly reconciled them, as it had unsettled poor 
Goldsmith's thoughts, and driven them in the direction of the 
stage. It was not unnatural. The reputation of his later 
writings, bringing him into occasional better company, had 
tempted him to habits of greater expense, while it failed to supply 
the means of keeping pace with them. His accounts with 
Newbery were growing more and more involved ; an unpaid note 
for fifty pounds, Avhich he had given in settlement three years ago, 
began to make threatening re-appearance ; his last draft upon the 
not unfriendly but cautious bookseller, though for only eleven 
guineas, had been dishonoured ; and ordinary modes of extrication 
appeared more difficult and distant than ever. There was hope in 
the theatre. Anxiety and pain he knew there would also be ; but 
he was not indisposed to risk them. They could never wholly 
otscure the brighter side. ~No longer might the playhouse be 
called the sole seat of wit ; nor could it any more be said, as in 
Steele's days, to bear as important relation to the manners as the 
bank to the credit of the nation : but besides the tempting profits 
of an "author's nights," which, with any reasonable success, could 
hardly average less than from three to four hundred pounds, there 
was nothing to make the town half so fond of a man, even yet, as 
a successful play. It had been the dream, too, of his own earliest 
ambition ; and though his juvenile tragedy had gone the way of 
dreams, he had now a surer and not untried ground to build upon, 
of humour, character, and wit. He resolved to attempt a comedy. 



24G OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 









el 

:JJ! 



What, meanwhile, his leisure amusements were, since Johnson's 
withdrawal to the Thrales had limited their intercourse even at 
Gerrard-street, may be worth illustrating by occasional little anec- 
dotes of the time, though rather loosely told. He had joined a card- 
club, at the Devil tavern near Temple-bar, where very moderate whist 
was played ; and where the members seem to have occupied the 
intervals of their favourite game with practical jokes upon himself. 
Here he had happened to give a guinea instead of a shilling, one 
night, to the driver of a coach (after dining with Tom Davies) ; and 
on the following night a fictitious coachman presented himself, to 
restore a guinea equally counterfeit. It was a trick to prove that not 
even the honesty of a hackney coachman would be too startling a 
trial for Goldsmith's credulity ; and, as anticipated, the gilded 
coin was taken with an overflow of simple thanks, and subsequent 
more solid acknowledgment of the supposed marvellous honesty. 
Other incidents tell the same tale of credulous, unsuspecting, odd | 
simplicity. Doctor Sleigh of Cork had asked him to be kind to a J 
young Irish law-student heretofore mentioned, who had taken 
chambers near his own, who was known afterwards as a writer for the . 
newspapers, as Foote's and Macklin's biographer, and, from the title 
of the most successful poem he published, as Conversation Cooke ; 
and this young student, invited to apply to him in case of need, 
was told with earnest regrets one day, in answer to a trifling appli- 
cation, that he was really not at that moment in possession of a 
guinea. The youth turned away in less distress than Goldsmith ; 
and, returning to his own chambers after midnight, found a 
difficulty in getting in. Goldsmith had meanwhile himself 
borrowed the money, followed with it too late, and thrust it, 
wrapped up in paper, half underneath the door. Cooke hurried 
next day to thank him, and tell him what a mercy it was some- 
body else had not laid hold of it. "In truth, my dear fellow," 
said Goldsmith, "I did not think of that." As little did he 
trouble himself to think, when a French adventurer went to him 
towards the close of the year with proposals for a History of 
England in French ; which was not only to be completed in fifteen 
volumes at the cost of seven guineas and a half, and to be paid for 
in advance, but to have the effect of bringing into more friendly 
relations the men of letters of both countries. Goldsmith, though 
he had been fain but a few days before this, for the humble 
payment of two guineas, to write Newbery a "Preface to 
"Wiseman's Grammar," had no mean notion of the dignity of 
literature in regard to such proposals as this French impostor's, and 
now indulged it at a thoughtless cost. Straightway he gave his 
name, impoverished himself by giving his last available guinea, 
and, in "the Colonel Chevalier de Champigny's" advertisements, 



chap, xv.] THE GREAT WORLD AND ITS RULERS. 247 

jostling the names of crowned heads and ambassadors, figured as 
the "Author of the Traveller." 

Pleasanter are the anecdotes which tell of his love for the 
young, and anxiety to have them for his readers. It was matter 
of pride to one with as gentle a spirit and a heart as wise as his 
own, the late Charles Lamb, to remember that the old woman who 
taught him his letters, had in her own school-girl days been patted 
on the head by Goldsmith. Visiting where she stayed one day, 
he found her reading his selection of Poems for Young Ladies, 
praised her fondness for poetry, and sent her his own poem to 
encourage it. The son of Hoole, Ariosto's translator, remembered 
a similar incident in his father's house. Other amusing traits 
might be added, strongly resembling such as already have been 
told. Booksellers would get him to recommend books, misguiding 
him as to the grounds of recommendation ; and though everybody 
had been laughing at the exaggerated accounts of Patagonians 
nine feet high, brought home by Commodore Byron's party, 
Goldsmith earnestly protested that he had talked with the 
carpenter of the commodore's ship (a " sensible, understanding 
"man, and I believe extremely faithful"), and by him had been 
assured, in the most solemn manner, of the truth of the relation. 
Nor was it altogether romance, though the honest carpenter made 
the most of what he had seen. Even the last survey of those 
coasts, though it does not establish the assertions of Magalhaens 
and Byron, leaves it quite certain that the Patagonians far exceed 
the height of ordinary men, and that the believers in this possibility 
were not nearly such fools as the majority too readily supposed. 



CHAPTEE XV. 



THE GREAT WORLD AND ITS RULERS. 1766. 

The eleventh year of Goldsmith's London struggle was now 
coming to a close, amid strange excitement and change, 
which may only here be so far pursued as to exhibit its re- ™, gg 
action on literature and its cultivators. What Garrick had 
reported of the ministry in the summer, was in the main correct. 
Though it had not broken to pieces, the King had exploded it ; 
and there was Pitt and a new "arrangement." The word was 
not ill chosen. Changes of ministry were now brought about 
without the conflict of principles or party, and by n6 better means 
than might be used for "arrangement" of the royal bed-chamber. 



248 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book in. 

Lord Rockingham had hardly taken office when the Duke of 
Cumberland's death left him defenceless against palace intrigues ; 
and their busy fomentors, the "king's friends" whom Burke has 
gibbetted in his Thoughts on Discontents, very speedily destroyed 
him. His Stamp Act repeal bill, his America trading bill, his 
resolution against General Warrants, and his Seizure of Papers' 
bill, were the signal for royal favour to every creeping placeman 
who opposed them ; and on the failure of the latter bill Grafton 
threw up his office, saying Pitt alone could save them. Pitt's fame 
as well as peace would have profited, had he consented to do that. 
But against his better self, the King's appeals had enlisted his pride ; 
he had not strength, amid failing health, to conquer the impulse of 
vanity ; he did not see that the real object aimed at, was no alliance 
of the throne with the people, but subordination of everything, includ- 
ing the great houses, to the throne ; and in an evil hour he consented 
to be Prime Minister, with the title of the Earl of Chatham. 

Rockingham retired, with hands as clean as when he entered 
office, without asking for honour, place, or pension for any of his 
friends, and with that phalanx of friends unbroken. It was 
in vain that Chatham attempted to separate the party from its 
chief. This was steadily resisted. Savile, Dowdeswell, Lord 
John Cavendish, the Duke of Richmond, the Duke of Portland, 
Fitzherbert, and Charles Yorke (Burke could only refuse future 
office, he had none to resign), persisted in resigning office ; and 
the only important members of the late administration who 
remained, were the two whom Cumberland had induced to join it, 
General Conway (with whom William Burke remained as under- 
secretary) and the Duke of Grafton. 

With these, though strongly opposed in views as well as temper, 
were now associated two men of remarkable talents, personal 
adherents of Chatham ; Lord Camden as Chancellor, and Lord 
Shelburne as a Secretary of State : the latter a young but not 
untried statesman, nor alone distinguished for political ability, but 
also for such rare tastes and independent originality of character, 
that men of science and letters, such men as even Goldsmith, had 
come to regard him as a friend. The next ingredient in the strange 
compound was Charles Townshend, at once perhaps the cleverest and 
undoubtedly the most dangerous man in the whole kingdom. Admi- 
rably did Horace Walpole remark that his good humour turned away 
hatred from him, but his levity intercepted love. He was made Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer, with the lead of the House of Commons ; and 
his opinions no man knew, save that they were simply the opinions 
of the House of Commons. He had with equal ability advocated 
every shade of 'opinion, as the majority had with equal impartiality 
voted ; and certainly no man, for his brief reign, was ever so 



chap, xv.] THE GREAT WORLD AND ITS RULERS. 249 

popular in it, or so nearly approached to itself in the extravagance 
of his inconsistencies. But a man is not remembered in history 
for his mere predominance there ; and he who exactly suits that 
audience, and "hits the house between wind and water," may be 
found to have lost a nobler hearing, and to have missed much 
worthier aims. Little spoken of indeed as Charles Townshend 
now is, it seems necessary to call to mind, when any modern 
writer pauses at his once famous name, that as well in the copious 
abundance of his faults as in the wonderful brilliancy of his parts 
he had far outstripped competition ; and must have ranked, even 
beyond the circle of his contemporaries, for the most knowing man 
of their age, but for his ignorance of " common truth, common 
p sincerity, common honesty, common modesty, common steadiness, 
¥ common courage, and common sense." Wanting these qualities, 
and having every other in surprising abundance, he most thoroughly 
completed the charm of powerful trouble which Chatham was now 
I preparing ; and in which every shade of patriot and courtier, 
king's-friend and republican, tory and whig, treacherous ally and 
open enemy, were at length most ingeniously united. Nobody 
knew anybody in this memorable cabinet, and all its members 
hated each other. Soon did even its author turn sullenly away from 
the monstrous prodigy he had created, and leave it to work its 
mischief unrestrained. 

Poor Conway first took the alarm, and got the Duke of Grafton 
to urge the necessity of having some one in the lower house, on 
whom real reliance could be placed. There will be "a strong 
"phalanx of able personages against us," he said; "and among 
" those whom Mr. Conway wishes to see support him is Mr. Burke, 
"'the readiest man on all points perhaps in the whole house." 
Burke had been a member little more than six months when this 
was written ; yet, even among the men who thus felt his usefulness, 
there was as little idea of recognising his claim to an office of any 
importance, as of offering to make him prime minister. His own 
wish had been, as soon as it became certain that the Rocking- 
hams must resign, to obtain an appointment which happened then 
to be vacant, and to have held which, however quickly surrendered, 
would have increased his parliamentary consideration ; but he 
failed in the attempt, and was styled, by the vehement Bishop of 
Chester, nothing short of a "madman" to have made it. "Here 
"is an Irishman," wrote Colonel Lee in the following month to 
the Prince Royal of Poland, " sprung up in the House of Commons, 
"who has astonished every body by the power of his eloquence, 
"and his comprehensive knowledge in all our exterior and 
" internal politics, and commercial interests. He wants nothing 
" but that sort of dignity annexed to rank and property in England, 

M 3 



250 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

"to make him the most considerable man in the lower house." 
Wanting that, however, he wanted all, so far as office was concerned. 
"Well might Walpole say that the narrowness of his fortune kept 
him down. The great families disowned him. Not many weeks 
after this letter was written, the amiable but irresolute Conway 
himself (from whose service, greatly to his honour, William Burke 
soon afterwards retired, and was replaced by David Hume), 
irritated by his predominance, jeered at him in public debate as 
"an Irish adventurer:" though, within a month, seventy-seven 
Lancaster merchants had publicly thanked him for his strenuous 
efforts to relieve the burdens on trade and commerce ; and Grafton 
had even gone so far as to urge upon Chatham, that he looked 
upon it he was a most material man to gain, even at the price of 
some office a trifle higher than that of a lordship at the Board of 
Trade. The attempt was made, and failed ; and it was well that 
it did so. It was well that when America again was taxed, Burke 
should have been free to enter his protest against it ; that when 
the public liberties were again invaded, Burke should have had 
the power to defend them ; that when the elective franchise was 
trampled under foot, and five several free elections were counted 
void, Burke, amidst even some defection of his friends, should have 
had the freedom, as he had the courage, to proclaim the consti- 
tution violated, and allegiance endangered ; that when Townshend 
began to make public ridicule of his colleagues, and raise the 
laugh of the House of Commons against the Graftons and Con ways, 
Burke should have met him with a wit as keen as his own, and a 
laugh more likely to endure ; and that throughout those counter- 
intrigues into which the palace intrigues now drove the great 
families, which would have shamed the morality of the highway, 
and which engaged the three " gangs" of the Bedfords, the Temple- 
Grenvilles, and the Court, in a profligate and desperate conflict of 
venality, rapacity, and falsehood, Burke and the Rockinghams 
should have held aloof, and escaped contamination of the baseness 
that so rode at the top of the world. 

What chance had quiet literature of attention or success, 
amid such scenes and struggles as thus disgraced and lowered the 
public men of England 1 What hope of hearing or consideration 
could fall to its professors from the class that should have led the 
nation, when, instead of leading it, they were but offering it high 
examples of venality and falsehood ? What possibility now existed 
of any kind of reward for those who had dignified their calling, 
and snatched it from the servitude it had so long lain under 1 
By such labours as Johnson's had been, and as Goldsmith's con- 
tinued to be, they had provided for another generation of writers, 
if not for themselves, surer friends and better paymasters than 



chap, xv.] THE GREAT WORLD AND ITS RULERS. 251 

either patron or publisher ; nor was it possible for men of letters 
again to become, what Sir Robert Walpole made and would have 
kept them. Never again with abject servility, as Goldsmith pithily 
expresses it, could they 

importune his Grace, 
Nor ever cringe to men in place, 
Nor undertake a dirty job, 
Nor draw the quill to write for Bob ; 

but what had been the effect of the change on Walpole's successors, 
the ministers and governors of the nation ? Had they stooped to 
pick up the hack-livery which the Goldsmiths had flung down, and 
put it on to serve themselves 1 It seemed so. No other interest 
did they appear to take in the condition or the uses of literature, 
but as a vast engine of libel, available only for the sordid traffick- 
ing, shameless corruption, and servile submission, which in turn 
ruled all the factions. George Grenville had used it, to assail 
Conway and the Rockinghams ; two new-made deans had resorted to 
it, to uphold their patron Grafton ; parson Scott had made a fire- 
brand of it, to fling destruction at the enemies of Sandwich ; Lord 
Temple had not scrupled to employ it, for the purpose of blacken- 
ing his brother and his brother-in-law ; and it had helped the 
unblushing Rigby to show, by jovial abuse of everybody all round, 
how entirely and exclusively he was his Grace the Duke of Bed- 
ford's, her Grace the Duchess's, and the whole House of Woburn's. 
Every month, every week, had its periodical calumny. The un- 
wieldy column of quarto and octavo, the light squadron of 
pamphlet and flying sheet, alike kept up the fire. " Faction only 
" fills the town with pamphlets," wrote Johnson soon after this 
date, " and greater subjects are forgotten in the noise of discord." 
" Politics and abuse," confesses one who stood behind the scenes, 
" have totally corrupted our taste. We might as well be given 
"up to controversial divinity. Nobody thinks of writing a line 
"that is to last beyond the next fortnight ;" or of listening, he 
might have added, to a line so written. The same authority, a 
politician and man of rank, left an account of the literature of the 
day, in which half a line is given to Goldsmith as " the correct 
" author of the Traveller," another to Smollett as a profligate hire- 
ling and abusive Jacobite writer, and a third to Johnson as a 
lumber of mean opinions and prostituted learning : but in which, 
Mrs. Macauley's History is compared to Robertson's, Mr. Richard 
Bentley's Patriotism held next in merit to the Dunciad, and 
Mr. Dalrymple's Eodondo counted hardly inferior to Hudibras ; 
in which Mr. Hoole is discovered to be a poet, and an elegant 
five shilling quarto which had appeared within the last few 
months with the title of the New Bath Guide, is proclaimed to have 



252 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

distinguished and marked out its writer from all other men, for 
possession of the easiest wit, the most genuine humour, the most 
inoffensive satire, the most unaffected poetry, and the most har- 
monious melody in every kind of metre. 

Is not the fashion as well as faction of the time thus reflected 
to us vividly 1 Now, of these admired ones, all excepting Chris- 
topher Anstey are forgotten ; nor is it likely that even Anstey 
would have been noticed with anything but a sneer, if, besides 
being a scholar and a wit, he had not also been a member of par- 
liament. Beyond the benches of the houses too, or the gossip of 
St. James's, this influence reached. It was social rank which had 
helped Anstey, for this poem of the New Bath Gruide, to no less a 
sum than two hundred pounds ; it was because Goldsmith had no 
other rank than as a man of letters, depressed and at that time 
very slowly rising, that his Traveller had obtained for him only 
twenty guineas. Even David Hume, though now accepted into the 
higher circles, undisturbed any longer by the "factious barba- 
" rians," and somewhat purified of late from history and philosophy 
by employment as under secretary of state, had not lost that 
painful sense of the social differences between Paris and London 
which he expressed twelve months before the present date. " If a 
" man have the misfortune in London to attach himself to letters, 
" even if he succeeds, I know not with whom he is to live, nor 
' ' how he is to pass his time in a suitable society. But in Paris, a 
K man that distinguishes himself in letters, meets immediately 
"with regard and attention." He complains in another letter 
that the best company in London are in a flame of politics ; and 
he declines an introduction to Mr. Percy because it would be 
impracticable for him to cultivate his friendship, as men of letters 
have in London no place of rendezvous, and are indeed ' ' sunk and 
" forgot in the general torrent of the world." Only one such man 
there was who would not be so sunk and forgot ; his own unluckily 
chosen protege Rousseau. That horrible English habit of in- 
difference, Jp^xt Jacques conceived to be a conspiracy to destroy 
him, for how could he live without being talked about ? He had 
first indicted Hume, therefore, as the leader of the conspiracy, and 
brought him forward to answer the indictment in the St. James's 
ni ~~ r 'cle ; and next had fallen foul of Horace Walpole as Hume's 
d vicious instrument, Bishop Warburton crying out with 
deiig^j ^ see " so seraphic a madman " attack "so insufferable a 
" coxd Nothing of a literary sort, indeed, made so much 

noise (\ mt at ^he close of the year as the mad libels of 

Ronss6iv e cariqatures made of them : unless it were the 

newcpap. readings, which, with the witty signature of 

Papyrms L a real name, which made its aptness so whimsical), 



chap, xvi.] COVENT-GARDEN AND DRURY-LANE. 253 

Caleb Whitefoord published in December ; wherein the public were 
informed that " this morning the Rfc. Hon. the Speaker was con- 
" victed of keeping a disorderly house," that "Lord Chatham took 
" his seat and was severely handled by the populace," and that 
" yesterday Doctor Jones preached at St. James's and performed 
" it with ease in less than fifteen minutes," with other as sur- 
prising items of information, at which the town is described 
to have wept with laughter. Goldsmith envied nothing so much, 
we are assured, as the authorship of this humourous sally ; and 
would gladly have exchanged for it his own most successful 
writings. Half sad, half satirical, perhaps he thus contrasted its 
reception with theirs. 

The young German student to whom allusion has been made, 
speaking from his judgment of the book that so enchanted him, 
had thought its author must have reason " thankfully to acknow- 
' ' ledge he was an Englishman, and to reckon highly the advantages 
' ' which his country and nation afforded him. " But would Goethe 
without limitation have said this, if there had lain before him the 
two entries from a bookseller's papers, wherewith the biographer of 
the author of the Vicar of Wakefield must close the year 1766 
and open the year 1767 ? "Received from Mr. Newbery," says 
the first, dated the 28th of December, " five guineas for writing a 
"short English Grammar. Oliver Goldsmith." "To cash," 
says the second, dated the 6th of January, " lent Doctor Goldsmith 
" one pound one. John Newbery." 



CHAPTER XVI. 



THEATRES ROYAL CO VENT-GARDEN AND DRURY-LANE. 1767. 

The opening, then, of the twelfth year of Oliver Goldsmit 
career as a man of letters, which finds him author of the 
Citizen of the World, the Traveller, and the Vicar of -^ 
Wakefield, finds him also writing a short English grammar 
for five guineas, and borrowing of his publisher the sur 
pound one. But thus scantily eking out his necessitie r 
employment and parsimonious lendings, his dramatic 
meanwhile been in progress. The venture I have 
the dawn, was now about to struggle into day. 
for his model the older English comedy. He 
greve's astonishing wit too exuberant for the sta^ .aid, for 
truth to nature, vivacity, life, and spirit, placed Farquhar first. 



\ 



254 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

With what was called the genteel or sentimental school that had 
since prevailed, and of which Steele was the originator, he felt no 
sympathy ; and cared chiefly for the Jealous Wife and the Clan- 
destine Marriage because they had shown the power to break through 
those trammels. What his countryman Farquhar had done, he re- 
solved to attempt ; and in that hearty hope had planned his play. 
With the help of nature, humour, and character, should these be in 
his reach, he would invoke the spirit of laughter, happy, unrestrained, 
and cordial : all the more surely as he reckoned, if with Garrick's 
help, and King's and Yates's ; though without them, if so com- 
pelled. For not in their names, or after Garrick's fashion, had he 
set down his exits and entrances, nor to suit peculiarities of theirs 
were his mirthful incidents devised. Upon no stage picture of the 
humourous, however vivid, but upon what he had seen and known 
himself of the humourous in actual life, he was determined to 
venture all ; believing that what was real in manners, however 
broad or low, if in decency endurable and pointing to no illiberal 
moral, could never justly be condemned as vulgar. And for this 
he had Johnson's approval. Indifferent to nothing that affected 
his friend, nor ever sluggish where help was wanted or active 
kindness needed to be done, Johnson promised* to write a prologue 
to the comedy. For again had he lately shown himself in Gerrard- 
street ; again had the club reunited its members ; and, once more 
in the society of Reynolds, Johnson, and Burke, Goldsmith was 
eager to forget his carking poverty, and count up his growing 
pretensions to greatness and esteem. 

What Boswell calls " one of the most remarkable incidents of 
8 ' Johnson's life," was now matter of conversation at the club. In 
February, the King had taken occasion to see and hold some con- 
versation with him on one of his visits to the royal library, where 
by permission of the librarian he frequently consulted books. 
The effect produced by the incident is a social curiosity of the time. 
Endless was the interest of it ; the marvel of it never to be done 
*^.th. " He loved to relate it with all its circumstances," says 
'swell, "when requested by his friends : " and " come now, sir, 
\ ( lis is an interesting matter ; do favour us with it," was the cry 
3ry friend in turn. So, often was the story repeated. How 
"«g had asked Johnson if he was then writing anything, and 
swered he was not, for he had pretty well told the world 
• ^w, and must now read to acquire more knowledge, 
said he did not think Johnson borrowed much from 
the other venturing to think he had done his part 
s handsomely assured " I would have thought so 
"too, ix ,ad not written so well." How his majesty next ob- 
served that he supposed he must already have read a great deal, to 



chap, xvi.] CO VENT-GARDEN AND DRURY-LANE. 255 

which Johnson replied that he thought more than he read, and for 
instance had not read much, compared with Doctor Warburton ; 
whereto the King rejoined that he heard Doctor Warburton was 
a, man of such general knowledge that his learning resembled 
Garrick's acting in its universality. How his majesty afterwards 
asked if there were any other literary journals published in the 
kingdom, except the Monthly Review and Critical Review, and 
being told there was no other, enquired which of them was best ; 
whereupon Johnson replied that the Monthly Review was done 
with most care, and the Critical upon the best principles, for that 
the authors of the Monthly were enemies to the church : which the 
King said he was sorry to hear. How his majesty talked of the 
university libraries, of Sir John Hill's veracity, and of Lord Lyttel- 
ton's history ; and how he proposed that the literary biography of the 
country should be undertaken by Johnson, who thereupon signified 
his readiness to comply with the royal wishes (of which he never 
heard another syllable). How, during the whole of the interview, 
to use the description given to Boswell by the librarian, Johnson 
talked to his majesty with profound respect, but still in his firm 
manly manner, with a sonorous voice, and never in that subdued 
tone which is commonly used at the levee and in the drawing- 
room. And how, at the end of it, the flattered sage protested 
that the manners of the bucolic young sovereign, ' ' let them talk 
" of them as they will," were those of as fine a gentleman as 
Louis the Fourteenth or Charles the Second could have been. 
"Ah !" said the charmed and charming SeVigne, when her King 
had danced with her, " c'est le plus grand roi du monde ! " 

" And did you say nothing, sir," asked one of the circle who 
stood round Johnson at Mr. Reynolds's when he detailed the 
interview there, " to the King's high compliment on your writing V 
" No, sir," answered Johnson, with admirable taste. " When 
" the king had said it, it was to be so. It was not for me to 
" bandy civilities with my Sovereign." Highly characteristic of him 
was what .he added, as his opinion of the advantage of such an 
interview. " I found," he said, in answer to the frank and lively 
questioning of Joseph Warton, "his majesty wished I should talk, 
" and I made it my business to talk. I find it does a man good 
"to be talked to by his Sovereign. In the first place a man can- 
" not be in a passion — " Here he was stopped ; but he had said 
enough. The consciousness of his own too frequent habit of roaring 
down an adversary in conversation, from which such men as the 
Wartons as well as Goldsmith suffered, could hardly have been 
more amusingly confessed ; and it is possible that Joseph Warton 
may have remembered it in the courteous severity of his retort, 
when Johnson so fiercely fell upon him at Eeynolds's a few years 



256 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

later. * ' Sir, I am not used to be contradicted. " ' •' Better for 
" yourself and friends, sir, if you were. Our admiration could not 
" be increased, but our love might." 

One of the listeners standing near Johnson, when he began his 
narrative, had, during the course of it, silently retreated from the 
circle. " Doctor Goldsmith," says Boswell, " remained unmoved 
" upon a sofa at some distance, affecting not to join in the least in 
i ' the eager curiosity of the company. He assigned as a reason 
"for his gloom and seeming inattention, that he apprehended 
" Johnson had relinquished his purpose of furnishing him with a 
"Prologue to his play, with the hopes of which he had been 
' ' nattered ; but it was strongly suspected that he was fretting 
" with chagrin and envy at the singular honour Doctor Johnson 
"had lately enjoyed. At length the frankness and simplicity of 
" his natural character prevailed. He sprung from the sofa, ad- 
" vanced to Johnson, and in a kind of flutter, from imagining 
" himself in the situation which he had just been hearing described, 
" exclaimed, ' Well, you acquitted yourself in this conversation 
" 'better than I should have done ; for I should have bowed and 
" ' stammered through the whole of it.' " 

Poor Goldsmith might have reason to be anxious about his pro- 
logue, for his play had brought him nothing but anxiety. In 
theatro sedet atra cura. A letter lies before me from Horace 
Walpole's neighbour, Kitty Clive, who writes expressively though 
she spells ill (the great Mrs. Pritchard used to talk of her "gownd"), 
assuring her friend Colman that " vexation and fretting in a theater 
" are the foundation of all Bilious complaints. I speak by ex- 
' ' peariance. I have been fretted by managers till my gaul has 
"overflow'd like the river Nile;" and precisely thus it befel 
Goldsmith. His comedy completed, Kitty's " bilious " complaint 
began ; and there was soon an overflow of gall. Matters could 
not have fallen out worse for any chance of advantageous approach 
to Garrick, and the new dramatist's thoughts, therefore, turned at 
first to Covent-garden. While the play was in progress it was 
undoubtedly intended for Beard's theatre. But Covent-garden was 
in such confusion from Rich's death, and Beard's doubts and 
deafness, that Goldsmith resolved to make trial of Garrick. They 
do not seem to have met since their first luckless meeting, but 
Reynolds now interposed to bring them together ; and at the 
painter's house in Leicester-square, Goldsmith placed in Garriek's 
hands the manuscript of the Good-Natured Man. Tom Davies 
was afterwards at some pains to describe what he conceived to have 
been the tone of their interview, and tells us that the manager, 
being at all times fully conscious of his own merit, was perhaps 
more ostentatious of his abilities to serve a dramatic author than 



)HAi>. xvi.] COVENT-GARDEN AND DRURY-LANE. 257 

became a man of his prudence, while the poet, on his side, was as 
fully persuaded of his own importance and independent greatness. 
Mr. Garrick expected " that the writer would esteem the patronage 
"of his play as a favour," but "Goldsmith rejected all ideas of 
"kindness in a bargain that was intended to be of mutual advan- 
tage to both parties." Both were in error, and providing cares 
and bitterness for each other ; of which the heaviest portion fell 
naturally on the weakest shoulders. Mere pride must always be 
injurious to all men ; but where it cannot itself afford that the very 
claim it sets up should succeed, deplorable indeed is its humiliation. 
Let us admit that, in this matter of patronage, the poet might 
not improperly have consented at the first, to what with an ill 
grace he was driven to consent at last. He was possibly too eager 
to visit upon the actor his resentment of the want of another kind 
of patronage ; and to interpose uneasy remembrances of a former 
quarrel, before what should have been a real sense of what was 
due to Garrick, and a proper concession of it. Johnson had no 
love of patronage, but he would not have counselled this. Often, 
when most bitter on the same angry theme, and venting with the 
least scruple his rage at the actor's foppery, would he stop to re- 
mind himself of the consideration Garrick needed after all, and of 
how little in reality he assumed. For then, all generous and 
tolerant as at heart Johnson was, not a merit or advantage of his 
fellow-townsman's unexampled success, since the day they entered 
London together with fourpence between them, but would rise 
and plead in his behalf. The popular actor's intercourse with 
the great, his absolute control of crowds of dependents, his 
sprightliness as a writer and talker equalled by few, his immense 
acquired wealth, the elevation and social esteem he had conferred 
upon his calling, and the applause he had for ever had sounded in 
his ears, and dashed in his face ; all would in succession array 
themselves in Johnson's mind, till he was fain to protest, philo- 
sopher as he was, that if all that had happened to him, if lords and 
ladies had flattered him, if sovereigns and statesmen had petted him, 
and if the public had adored him, he must have had a couple of 
fellows with long poles continually walking before him to knock 
down everybody that stood in the way. " Consider, sir, if all this 
"had happened to Cibber or Quin, they'd have jumped over the 
"moon." "Yet," he added smiling, "Garrick speaks to us." 
The condescension of patronage was at least a very harmless long 
pole, and Goldsmith might have taken a few taps from it. A mere 
sensitive though clever thinker like Hans Andersen, fretting behind 
the scenes, will talk of an actor putting himself in one scale and 
all the rest of the world in another ; but a profoundly just man 
like Goethe, wise in a theatre as everywhere else, will show you 



258 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

that the actor's love of admiration is a part of his means to please, 
and that he is nothing if he seem not something to himself and 
others. Not to be omitted, at the same time, and not to be palliated, 
is Garrick's large share of blame in this special instance. His first 
professions should not have merged, as they did, into excuses and 
delays ; but should have taken, either way, a decisive tone. 
Keeping up fair words of success to Goldsmith, it would seem he 
gave private assurances to Johnson and Reynolds that the comedy 
could not possibly succeed. Interviews followed at his own house ; 
explanations, and proposals for alteration ; doubtful acquiescence, 
and doubtful withdrawal of it. Matters stood thus, the season 
meanwhile passing to its close, when Goldsmith, whose wants had 
never been so urgent, and whose immediate chances of relieving 
them had been lost through Garrick's delays, thought himself 
justified in asking the manager to advance him a small sum upon a 
note of one of the Newberys. Garrick had at this time renewed his 
promise to act the play ; and was in all probability very glad to 
lend the money, and profit by what advantage it might offer him. 
It is certain that soon afterwards he suggested to the luckless 
dramatist, as essential to his success, a series of important altera- 
tions which were at once and with some indignation rejected. 

The leading characters in the piece were three ; and are under- 
stood to remain, at present, much as when they left Garrick's 
hands. In Honeywood, who gives the comedy its title, we have 
occasional conscious glance, not to be mistaken, at the writer's own 
infirmities. Nor is there any disposition to, make light of them. 
Perhaps the errors which arise from easiness of disposition, and 
tend to unintentional confusions of right and wrong, have never 
been touched with a happier severity. Splendid as they seem, 
and borrowing still the name from some neighbouring duty, they 
are shown for what they really are ; and not all our liking for 
good-nature, nor all the mirth it gives us in this comedy, can 
prevent our seeing with its help that there is a charity which may 
be a great injustice, a sort of benevolence for which weakness 
would be the better name, and friendship that may be nothing but 
credulity. In Croaker we have the contrast and foil to this, and one 
of the best drawn characters of modern comedy. In the way of 
wit, Wycherley or Congreve has done few things better ; and 
Farquhar himself could not have surpassed the heartiness of it, or 
thrown into the croaking a more unctuous enjoyment. We feel it to 
be a perfect satisfaction to be miserable with Croaker. His friend 
Dick Doleful was quite right when he discovered that he rhymed 
to joker. The Rambler's brief sketch of "Suspirius the screech- 
" owl " supplied some hints for the character ; but the masterly 
invention, and rich breadth of comedy, which made a living mail 



chap, xvi.] CO VENT-GARDEN AND DRURY-LANE. 259 

out of this half page of a book, were entirely Goldsmith's. It is 
the business of the stage to deal with what lies about us most 
familiarly, humanitas humanissima ; and it is the test of a drama- 
tist of genius that he should make matters of this kind, in them- 
selves the least remote, appear to be the most original. ISTo one 
had seen him on the stage before ; yet every one had known, or 
been, his own Croaker. For all the world is for ever croaking, 
more or less ; and only a few know why. " Never mind the 
" world," says the excellent Mrs. Croaker to her too anxious lord ; 
" never mind the world, my dear, you were never in a pleasanter 
"place in your life." On the other hand, who does not feel that 
Mr. Croaker is also right after his fashion 1 " There's the advantage 
K of fretting away our misfortunes before-hand, we never feel 
"them when they come." In excellent harmony with these 
imaginary misfortunes, too, are the ideal acquaintance of Lofty ; 
as new to the stage, and as commonly met with in the street. Jack 
Lofty is the first of the family of Jack Brags, who have since been 
so laughter-moving in books as well as theatres ; nor is his mirth 
without a moral. "I begin to find that the man who first in- 
[ ' vented the art of speaking truth, was a much cunninger fellow 
" than I thought him." It was Mrs. Inchbald's favourite character ; 
when it fell into the hands of the admirable Lewis, on the play's 
reproduction half a century since, it became a general favourite ; 
and when a proposed revival of the comedy was interrupted eleven 
years ago by the abrupt termination of the best theatrical manage- 
ment within my recollection, it was the character selected for 
personation by the great actor, Mr. Macready, who then held 
Garrick's office and power in the theatre. 

Yet on the unlucky Lofty it was, that the weight of Garrick's 
hostile criticism descended. He pointed out that according to the 
construction of the comedy, its important figures were Croaker 
and Honeywood ; that anything which drew off attention from 
them must damage the theatrical effect ; and that a new character 
should be introduced, not to divide interest or laughter with 
theirs, but to bring out their special contrasts more broadly. It 
was a criticism unworthy of Garrick, because founded on the most 
limited stage notions ; yet he adhered to it pertinaciously. He 
would play the alteration, if made ; but he would not play the 
comedy as it stood. Goldsmith made in the first instance very 
violent objections ; softened into remonstrance and persuasion, 
which he found equally unavailing ; is described to have written 
many letters which displayed, in more than the confusion of their 
language and the unsteadiness of their writing, the anxiety and 
eagerness of the writer ; and at last, under the bitter goad of his 
pecuniary wants, is understood to have made partial concession. 



260 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

But it had come too late. The alterations were certainly not 
made, though the comedy remained some time longer in Garrick's 
hands. There was a long fluctuation between doubt and en- 
couragement, says the Percy Memoir, " with his usual uncertainty." 
The truth appears to have been, that the more Garrick examined 
the comedy, the less available to his views he found it ; and he 
was at last driven to an expedient he had before found serviceable, 
when more had been promised than he was able to perform, and 
his authorial relations were become somewhat complex. He pro- 
posed a sort of arbitration. But poor Goldsmith smarted more 
under this than any other part of the tedious negotiation ; and, on 
Garrick's proceeding to name for his arbitrator, Whitehead the 
laureat, who was acting at the time as his "reader" of new plays 
for Drury-lane, a dispute of so much vehemence and anger 
ensued that the services of Burke as well as Reynolds were needed 
to moderate the disputants. Of all the manager's slights of the 
poet, this was forgotten last ; and occasion to recall it was always 
seized with bitterness. There was in the folloAving year a hideously 
unintelligible play called Zingis, forced upon Garrick by a "dis- 
tinguished officer in the Indian service," and by Garrick forced 
nine nights upon the public, as to which the same process again 
took place, under resolute protest from the gallant author. "I 
" think it very unnecessary," said the gallant Col. Alexander Dow, 
and being a stronger man than Goldsmith he carried his point, 
" to submit the tragedy to any man's judgment but yours .... I 
" know not in what manner Doctor Goldsmith came to a know- 
" ledge of this transaction ; but it is certain that he mentioned it 
"publicly last night at Ranelagh, to a gentleman who asked me 
" in a jeering manner, What sentence the committee of critics had 
" passed on my play ?" 

Such was the state of affairs, and of feeling, between Garrick 
and Goldsmith, when a piece of news came suddenly to their 
knowledge, in no small degree interesting to both. Beard's un- 
certainty as to his own and his father-in-law's property in Covent- 
garden had closed at last, in a very unexpected arrangement. 
Early in the May of this year Colman's mother (who was sister to 
Lady Bath) died, leaving him a legacy of six thousand pounds ;. 
and this strengthened him for a step, of which it is probable that 
Garrick, in a letter already quoted, threw out the first brooding 
germ. They had but patched and darned their quarrel ; and on 
the occasion of a comedy by Colman from Voltaire (The English 
Merchant) produced in this preceding February, new rents had 
shown themselves. Meanwhile it was reported that two men of 
mere business, named Harris and' Rutherford, were in treaty with 
Beard ; but another rumour was with greater difficulty believed, 



eiiAr. xvi.] COVENT-GARBEN AND DRURY-LANE. 261 

to the effect tliat inducements had been successfully thrown out to 
Powell, notwithstanding his habit, according to his own letters, of 
teaching his wife and children to bless Garrick's name, to withdraw 
him from his Drury-lane engagements and enlist him in hostility 
to Garrick. There is no reason to doubt the interest which, in 
the midst of all his jealousies of temperament, the great actor 
had evinced for his young competitor ; and from a narrative 
which necessarily throws into prominence the weaker points of his 
character, it should not be omitted that he really loved his art, 
and desired always, to see it advanced in esteem. " Make sure of 
"your ground in every step you take," had been his advice to 
Powell. " Read at your leisure other books besides plays in which 
" you are concerned. Do not sacrifice your taste and feelings to 
I ' applause : convert an audience to your manner, do not be 
"converted to theirs." It was an ill return to find Powell now 
secretly deserting to the camp of the enemy ! "It is impossible 
"that it should hurt us," Garrick nevertheless wrote to his 
brother, with a sense that it would hurt them visible in every 
line. "If Powell is to be director, we have reason to rejoice ; 
"for he is finely calculated for management. What a strange 
"affair ! We shall know all in time. I am satisfied, be the news 
"true or false." He knew more when he next wrote, and was less 
able to comprehend it ; but he declared that it could not give him an 
uneasy moment, protested that everybody would be surprised at 
the ease and little concern he should manifest on the occasion, and 
proceeded to give his brother very doubtful proofs of this equani- 
mity. " Who finds money 1 what is the plan ? who are the directors ? 
" What ! has Holland no hand in this ? — is he hummed ? " 

Holland, though a young actor in the same walk, and of ambi- 
tious expectations, had a most romantic friendship for Powell ; 
had first introduced him to Garrick ; had surrendered parts to 
him which at the time were understood to be his own ; and, 
strangely enough, while the sudden death of Powell was matter of 
general regret in less than two years from this time, himself very 
suddenly died. But he had not the means to join Powell in such 
a scheme as the present, and the doubt of Powell's own means was 
a very natural one on Garrick's part. The money required, as he 
had himself before stated, was sixty thousand pounds, of which 
Harris and Rutherford contributed half ; and with whatever reason 
he had questioned Powell's tact for the management, his inability 
to supply the money might at any rate be held as unquestionable. 
But even Garrick seems as little to have known what a fashion his 
handsome young rival had become, without as well as within 
the theatre, as that in two short years this fashion, and its 
attendant dissipation, would claim their victim. Eleven thousand 



262 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

pounds were advanced towards Powell's share in the patent, by the 
means and intercession of a famous beauty ; and Colman, having 
added to his mother's legacy by a loan from Becket the bookseller, 
consented to supply Powell's ignorance of management, and 
become purchaser of the fourth share. The matter was finally 
arranged ; another important desertion was effected from Drury- 
lane in the person of Yates and his wife (an exquisite, gentle 
actress, though Kitty Clive, in one of her letters, objects to her 
habit of "totering about to much, and flumping down to often") ; 
and the agreements were signed, — before Garriqk again wrote from 
Bath to his brother. He was now uneasy enough. " Powell is a 
" scoundrel," he said, " and Colman will repent his conjunction in 
" every vein ... I hope to God that my partner has not talked 
1 '' with Powell of an agreement, or a friendly intercourse, between 
' ' the houses ; that would be ruin indeed ! I cannot forgive 
" Powell." His partner, Lacy, had so spoken ; and had indiscreetly 
promised a continuance of friendship, which Garrick at once with- 
drew ; and exacting, as he had a perfect right to do, Powell's bond 
of a thousand pounds forfeited by the breach of his engagement, 
he brought over Barry and Mrs. Dancer to Drury-lane by a bribe 
of 1500L a-year, and openly prepared for war. 

From the Yateses, with whom he was well acquainted, Gold- 
smith probably heard of all this while in progress, and naturally 
with some satisfaction. He made immediate overtures to Colman. 
By midsummer, Powell being in Bristol and the other two partners 
abroad, Colman was in the thick of his new duties ; and, for- 
tunately for Goldsmith, being left to make his preparations alone, 
his first acts of management (as he afterwards stated during his 
disputes with his fellow-patentees) were "the receiving a comedy 
" of Doctor Goldsmith, and making an engagement with Mr. 
" Macklin," without consulting Harris and Rutherford, as he knew 
not where to direct to them. Very creditable, in all its circum- 
stances, was this manifestation of sympathy on Column's part to an 
untried brother dramatist ; and Goldsmith, though so wearied 
already with his dramatic experience as to have resolved that his 
first should be his last comedy, might fairly think and rejoice, for 
others if not for himself, that dramatic poets were likely for the 
future to have a protector who would decline taking advantage of 
their dependent situation, and scorn the importance derivable from 
trifling with their anxieties. The words are in a letter he ad- 
dressed to Colman, which now lies before me ; which was found 
the other day, by my friend Mr. Raymond, among the papers of 
Colman's successor at the Hayniarket ; and of which I here present 
a fac-simile to the reader. A man's handwriting is part of himself, 
and helps to complete his portraiture. 



chap, xvi.] COVENT-GARDEN AND DRURY-LANE. 263 

J os\a^ t-eA hA^^ c/U gitucj^J /a) 



CcjS 




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264 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [i 







3 cc^J ^jfes^iL c^^t 






ecm^ Tt^'u^/^Tfc^UL ur&cL 



sap. xvi.] COVENT-GARDEN AND DRURY-LANE. 2& 

hating v-C <Xa c-oi^f-J o-r ^jrg flrn^i 



Having taken this decisive step, Goldsmith, wrote on the follow - 

I bag day to the now rival manager, who had left town for Lichfield ; 

, and, though his letter shows the coolness which had arisen between 

I them, it is a curious proof of his deference to the sensitiveness of 

I Garrick that he should use only the name of the old Covent Garden 

patentee, and put forth what he had recently done with his play 

under cover of his original intention in respect to it. His letter 

is dated London, July 20, 1767, and runs thus. " Sir, A few 

\ ' days ago Mr. Beard renewed his claim to the piece which I had 

"written for his stage, and had as a friend submitted to your 

" perusal. As I found you had very great difficulties about that 

' ' piece, I complied with his desire ; thinking it wrong to take up 

" the attention of my friends with such petty concerns as mine, or 

N 




266 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

"to load yoiu* good nature by a compliance rather with their 
"requests than my merits. I am extremely sorry that you should 
"think me warm at our last meeting; your judgment certainly 
" ought to be free, especially in a matter which must in some 
"measure concern your own credit and interest. I assure you, 
" sir, I have no disposition to differ with you on this or any other 
" account, but am with an high opinion of your abilities and a 
"very real esteem, sir, your most obedient humble servant, 
"Oliver Goldsmith." To this Garrick answered by a letter, 
dated five days later from Lichfield, in these terms. " Sir, I was 
" at Birmingham when your letter came to this place, or I should 
"have thanked you for it immediately. I was indeed much hurt 
1 ' that your warmth at our last meeting mistook my sincere and 
"friendly attention to your play, for the remains of a former 
"misunderstanding which I had as much forgot as if it had never 
" existed. What I said to you at my own house I now repeat, 
* ' that I felt more pain in giving my sentiments than you possibly 
" would in receiving them. It has been the business, and ambition 
" of my life, to live upon the best terms with men of genius ; and 
" as I know that Dr. Goldsmith will have no reason to change his 
" present friendly disposition towards me, I shall be glad of any 
" future opportunity to convince him how much I am his obedient 
' ' servant and well-wisher, D. Garrick. " 

Thus fairly launched was this great theatrical rivalry ; which 
received even additional zest from the spirit with which Foote was 
now beginning his first regular campaign in the Haymarket, by 
right of the summer patent the Duke of York had obtained for 
him (some compensation for the accident at Lord Mexborough's 
the preceding summer, when a practical joke of the Duke's cost 
Foote his leg), and with help of the two great reinforcements 
already secured for Drury-lane, of Barry and his betrothed 
Mrs. Dancer, afterwards his wife. They played in a poor and 
somewhat absurd tragedy called the Countess of Salisbury, which 
had made a vast sensation in Dubbin ; and it is related of Gold- 
smith, as an instance of the zeal with which he had embarked 
against the Drury-lane party, that he took whimsical occasion 
during its performance of suddenly turning a crowded and till then 
favourable audience against the tragical Countess and her representa- 
tive, by ludicrous allusion to another kind of actress then figuring 
on a wider stage. He had sat out four foolish acts with great 
calmness and apparent temper ; but as the plot thickened in the 
fifth, and the scene became filled with "blood" and "slaughter," 
he got up from his seat in a great hurry, cried out very audibly, 
" Brownrigg ! Brownrigg ! by God ! " and left the theatre. It may 
have been partisanship, but it was also very pardonable wit. 



chap. xvi. J 00 VENT-GARDEN AND DRURY-LANE. 287 

Nor, if partizanship may be justified at any time, was it here 
without its excuses. He had reason to think Colman embarked 
in a good work, and for which, whether knowingly or not, he had 
made an unexampled sacrifice. On the death of stingy old Lord 
Bath three years before, he had left his enormous wealth (upwards 
of 1,200,000?.) to an old brother he despised, with a sort of 
injunction that his nephew was to have part in its ultimate disposi- 
tion ; and the Covent-garden arrangements had not long been 
completed when General Pulteney died, leaving Colman a simple 
four-hundred a-year. His connection with Miss Ford the actress 
j had been displeasing to the general ; but the unpardonable offence 
I was his having secretly turned manager of a theatre. Miss Ford 
was the mother of the younger Colman, now a child, yet already 
old enough to feel, as he remembered when he wrote his Random, 
Records, the impression at this time made upon him by the poet's 
simple and playful manners, and by that love of children which 
) had attended Goldsmith through life, which was noted everywhere, 
and made itself felt at even the small dinner parties of pompous 
Hawkins. "I little thought what I should have to boast," says 
Miss Hawkins, describing her experiences when she used to sit 
upon the carpet in the drawing room till dinner was announced, 
"when Goldsmith taught me to play Jack and Gill by two bits of 
i" paper on his fingers." This lady observed, too, a distinction 
' between Johnson's and Garrick's way with children, which the 
younger Colman partly confirms in contrasting Goldsmith's with 
Garrick's. The one, he tells us, played to please the boy, the 
other as though to please himself ; and not even Foote, with his 
knowing broad grin, his snuff-begrimed face, and his unvarying 
salutation of " blow your nose, child," was half so humorous as 
I Goldsmith, of whose tenderness of course he possessed nothing. The 
] poet would at any time, for amusement of the nursery, dance a 
j mock minuet, sing a song, or play the flute ; and thought little of 
even putting on his best wig the wrong side foremost. One of 
I these childish reminiscences will bear relating in detail. Drinking 
j coffee one evening with Colman, on one of his first visits to Kich- 
1 mond, Goldsmith took little George upon his knee to amuse him ; 
and being rewarded for his pains by a spiteful slap in the face, 
; summary paternal punishment was inflicted by solitary confinement 
; in an adjoining dark room. But here, when matters seemed 
desperate with the howling and screaming little prisoner, the door 
was unexpectedly unlocked and opened. "It was the tender- 
" hearted Doctor himself," pursues the teller of the story, "with a 
"lighted candle in his hand, and a smile upon his countenance, 
" which was still partially red from the effects of my petulance. 
" T sulked and sobbed, and he fondled and soothed, till I began to 

N 2 



268 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [boor in. 

" brighten. Goldsmith, who in regard to children was like the 
"Village Preacher he has so beautifully described, for 'their 
" ' welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed,' seized the 
"propitious moment of returning good humour ; so he put down I 
" the candle, and began to conjure. He placed three hats which 
" happened to be in the room, upon the carpet, and a shilling. 
" under each ; — the shillings, he told me, were England, France, 
" and Spain. Hey, presto, cockolorum ! cried the Doctor ; and lo ' 
" on uncovering the shillings, which had been dispersed each 




"beneath a separate hat, they were all found congregated under , 
" one. I was no Politician at five years old, and therefore might 
"not have wondered at the sudden revolution which brought 
"England, France, and Spain all under one crown ; but as I was 
"also no Conjuror, it amazed me beyond measure. Astonishment 
" might have amounted to awe for one who appeared to me gifted 
' ' with the power of performing miracles, if the good-nature of the 
" man had not obviated my dread of the magician ; but from that 
"time, whenever the Doctor came to visit my father 'I plucked 
" ' his gown to share the good man's smile,' a game of romps 
" constantly ensued, and we were always cordial friends and merry 
" playfellows." The little hero of the incident was a child of only 
five years old, but we have evidence in the letters of Garrick to 
his father, that he used at this time to imitate Garrick showing 
Charles Dibdin how to act Lord Ogleby ; and that even a full year 
and a half earlier he had entertained Mrs. Garrick with a whole 
"budget" of stories and songs, had delivered the ditty of the 
Chimney Siveep with exquisite taste as a solo, and, in the form of 
a duet with Garrick himself, had sung Old Rose and Burn the 
Bellows. We shall be perfectly safe, therefore, in accepting it 
on his authority that Oliver Goldsmith in 1767 was neither more 
nor less than a conjuror. 



chap. xvii. ] THE WEDNESDAY-CLUB. 269 



CHAPTEK XVII. 



THE WEDNESDAY-CLUB. 1767. 

But more serious affairs than conjuring again claim Goldsmith's 
attention, and ours. His comedy cannot, in the most 
favourable expectation, appear before Christmas ; and his ml Vq 
necessities are hardly less pressing, meanwhile, than in 
his most destitute time. The utmost he received this year from 
the elder Newbery, for his usual task-work, would seem to have 
been about ten pounds for a compilation on a historical subject 
(The British Empire). The concurrent advance of another ten 
pounds on his promissory note, though side by side with the 
ominous shadow of the yet unpaid note of four years preceding, 
shows their friendly relations subsisting still ; but the present 
illness of the publisher, from which he never recovered, had for 
some months interrupted the ordinary course of his business, and 
its management was gradually devolving on his nephew. No less 
a person than Tom Davies, however, came to Goldsmith's relief. 

Tom's business had thriven since he left the stage, and he 
determined to speculate in a history. Goldsmith's anonymous 
Letters from a Nobleman to his Son continued to sell, and still to 
excite curiosity whether or not Lord Lyttelton had really written 
them. "I asked Lord L. himself," writes the learned Mrs. Carter 
to the less learned Mrs. Vesey, " who assured me that he had 
"never read them through, and moreover seemed to be very 
f clearly of opinion that he did not write them. Seriously, you 
f may deny his being the author with the fullest certainty. It 
"seems they were writ by Lord Cork." All this sort of gossip 
(with no more foundation in the latter case than that Lord Cork 
and Orrery had addressed to his son a translation of Pliny's as 
well as other letters, and. was no longer alive to contradict the 
rumour) was better known to Davies than to any one ; and the 
sensible suggestion occurred to him of a History of Rome from the 
same hand, in the same easy, popular, unlearned manner. An agree- 
ment was accordingly drawn up, in which Goldsmith undertook to 
write such a book in two volumes, and if possible to complete it in 
two years, for the sum of two hundred and fifty guineas ; an 
undertaking of a somewhat brighter complexion than has yet 
appeared in these pages ; rife with future promise, it may be, 
in that respect ; and certainly very creditable to Davies. It is 



270 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

alleged by Seward and Isaac Reed, that, shortly before this agree- 
ment, Goldsmith's necessities had induced him to apply for the 
Gresham lectureship on Civil Law ; an office of small enumera- 
tion and smaller responsibility, which the death of a Mr. Mace 
had vacated and to which a Mr. Jeffries was elected ; but his 
name does not seem to have been formally entered as a candidate, 
and it is more certain that shortly after the agreement with Davies 
he had again taken lodgings in his favourite Islington, and was 
"busy writing there. 

i Goldsmith's resource, in the midst of labour, as in his brief 
intervals of leisure, was still the country-haunt, the club, and the 
theatre ; nor should what was called his Wednesday-club, which 
has hitherto escaped all his biographers, fail to find commemora- 
tion here. The social dignities of Gerrard-street had not sufficed 
for his "clubable" propensities, Wholly at his ease there, he 1 
could not always be ; and it will happen to even those who are 
greatest with their great friends, to find themselves pleasantest 
with their least. The very year before Doctor Johnson died he 
expressed his own strong sense of this, in founding the modest 
club to which he invited Reynolds (" the terms are lax, and the 
expenses light ... we meet thrice a-week, and he who misses 
forfeits twopence") ; and, if it were a want to Johnson to have 
occasional admixture of inferior intellects to be at ease with, how 
much more to Goldsmith ! His shilling-rubber club at the Devil- 
tavern (scene of that earliest of clubs for which Ben Jonson wrote I 
his Latin rules), has been already named ; and he frequented 
another of the same modest pretension, in the parlour of the 
Bedford in Covent-garden. But what most consoled him for the 
surrendered haunts of his obscurer days, was a minor club (known 
afterwards by his own name) at the Globe-tavern in Fleet-street ; 
where he attended every Wednesday as regularly as on the 
Mondays or Fridays in Gerrard-street, and seems to have played 
the fool as agreeably as when he had no reputation to be 
damaged by the folly. Songs sung after supper were the leading 
attraction at this club ; and I derive my principal knowledge of it 
from a collection of songs and poems of the time which belonged 
to one of the members, a hanger-on at the theatres, familiarly 
known by most of the actors, and to whom we owe a little book 
called Alackliniana. This worthy " William Ballantyne" had 
solaced his old age with manuscript notes on the amusements of 
his youth ; and the book, so annotated, passed into the possession 
of my friend Mr. Bolton Corney, who placed it at my disposal. 

Whether Macklin belonged to the club appears to be doubtful, 
but among the least obscure members were King the comedian 
(whose reputation Lord Ogleby had established) ; little Hugh 



chap, xvii.] THE WEDNESDAY-CLUB. 271 

Kelly, a young Irishman of eight-and-twenty, who had lately 
shown some variety of cleverness and superficial talent, and now 
occupied chambers near Goldsmith's, in the Temple ; Edward 
Thompson, whom Garrick assisted with his interest to promotion 
in the navy, and who is still remembered for his songs and his 
edition of Andrew Marvel ; and another Irishman, named Glover, 
also a protege of Garrick' s, and named on an earlier page, who 
had been bred a doctor, figured afterwards as an actor, and now 
earned scanty subsistence as a sort of Grub-street Galen. The 
anecdotes of Goldsmith which appeared on his death in the 
Annual Register (with the signature G), and some of which 
reappeared in the Dubbin edition (1.777) of his poems by Malone, 
to be afterwards adopted into Evans's biographical sketch and 
transferred to the Percy Memoir, were written by this Glover ; 
who was one of the many humble Irish clients whom Goldsmith's 
fame drew around him, and who profited by every scantiest gleam 
of his prosperity. It is he who says (and none had better cause to 
say it), " Our Doctor" as Goldsmith was now universally called, 
"had a constant levee of his distrest countrymen, whose wants, as 
"far as he was able, he always relieved ; and he has been often 
" known to leave himself even without a guinea, in order to 
"supply the necessities of others." It is to be added of Glover, 
however, who was notorious for his songs and imitations, that he 
was addicted to practical jokes ; and often rewarded his patron's 
generosity with very impudent betrayal of his simplicity. It was 
he who, in one of their summer rambles over Hampstead, took 
Goldsmith into a cottage at West-end, through the open window 
of which they saw a little party assembled at tea, of whom in 
reality he knew nothing though he undertook to introduce his 
friend ; and who actually, to the poet's awkward horror and mal- 
address when he saw the trick, imposed himself on the party 
assembled as a pretended old acquaintance, on the host as known 
to the guests and on the guests as familiar with the host, and 
soolly sat down to tea with them. 

Hugh Kelly seems to have been a greater favourite than Glover 
with good Mr. Ballantyne. "Much," says one of his notes, 
"as I esteemed Mr. Kelly, when a member of the Wednesday- 
" club, at the Globe in Fleet-street, called Goldsmith's, who was 
" seldom absent — I respected him because he was always unassu- 
"ming — this" (the note is appended to a poem of Kelly's called 
Meditation), "had I then known him to be the author of it, 
"would have made me adore him." The poem nevertheless is 
poor enough ; and, though Kelly was certainly popular with his 
nearer friends, and had many kindly qualities, his unassumingness 
may be doubted. He had lately emerged to notoriety, out of a 



272 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

desperate and obscure struggle, by somewhat questionable arts. 
His youth had been passed in Dublin as a stay-maker's apprentice, 
and making sudden flight from this uncongenial employment, he 
was obliged to resume it in London to save himself from starva- 
tion ; but he succeeded afterwards in hiring himself as writer to 
an attorney, from this got promotion to Grub-street, and had. 
laboured meanly, up to the present year, in hack work for the 
magazines and newspapers (Newbery having given him employ- 
ment on the Public Ledger), when it occurred to him to make 
profit of Churchill's example and set up as a satirist and censor of 
the stage. This he did after the usual fashion of an imitator, and 
in his Thespis caricatured the Rosciad. Poor Mrs. Dancer he 
called a "moon-eyed idiot;" talked of " Olive's weak head and 
"execrable heart ;" libelled such men as Woodward and Moody ; 
and lavished all his praise on the Hursts, Ackmans, and Bransbys. 
Yet though the manifest source of such inspiration* was a well- 
known public house within a few doors of Drury-lane theatre, 
where the fettered lions of the stage were always growling against 
their tamers, we find that " the talents for satire displayed in this 
"work by Mr. Kelly, recommended him at once to the notice of 
"Mr. Garrick." What resulted from that notice will soon, with 
somewhat higher pretensions, re-introduce the object of it ; and 
meanwhile he may be left with Mr. Ballantyne's praise, and with the 
remark, to counterbalance it, of Johnson, who made answer to Kelly's 
request for permission to converse with him, " Sir, I never desire to 
" converse with a man who has written more than he has read." 

Of the obscurer members of the Wednesday or Globe club our 
mention may be limited to a Mr. Gordon, who is remembered by 
Mr. Ballantyne in connection with the jovial and jocund song of 
Nottingham Ale. "Mr. Gordon," he says, "the largest man I 
" ever kept company with, usually sung this song at the 
" Globe club ; and it always very much pleased Doctor Goldsmith, 
"Doctor Glover, good Tom King the comedian, and myself, 
" William Ballantyne." Nor was the evening's amusement 
limited to songs, but had the variety of dramatic imitations, with an 
bccasional original epigram ; andhere was first heard that celebra- 
ted epitaph on Edward Purdon, which showed that Goldsmith must 
lately have been reading Pope's and Swift's Miscellanies. 

Here lies poor Ned Purdon, from misery freed, 

Who long was a bookseller's hack ; 
He led such a damnable life in this world, 

I don't think he'll wish to come back. 

It was in the April of the present year that Purdon fitly closed 
his luckless life by suddenly dropping down dead in Smitlifield ; 



chap, xvii.] THE WEDNESDAY-CLUB. 273 

and as it was chiefly Goldsmith's pittance that had saved him thus 
long from starvation, it was well that the same friend should give 
him his solitary chance of escape from oblivion. "Doctor Gold- 
" smith made this epitaph," says William Ballantyne, " in his way 
" from his chambers in the Temple to the Wednesday evening's 
' ' club at the Globe. I think he will never come back, I believe 
" he said. I was sitting by him, and he repeated it more than 
"twice. I think he will never come back." Ah! and not alto- 
gether as a jest, it may be, the second and the third time : it is 
not without a certain pathos to me, indeed, that he should so have re- 
; peated it. There was something in Purdon's fate, from their first 
; meeting in college to that incident in Smithfield, which had no 
very violent contrast to his own ; and remembering what Glover 
has said of his frequent sudden descents from mirth to melancholy, 
some such fitful change of temper would here have been natural 
enough. " His disappointments at these times," Glover tells us, 
P made him peevish and sullen ; and he has often left a party of 
" convivial friends abruptly in the evening, in order to go home 
" and brood over his misfortunes." But a better medicine for his 
grief than brooding over it, was a sudden start into the country 
to forget it ; and it was probably with a feeling of this kind he 
had in the summer revisited Islington, to which, after this Wed- 
nesday-club digression, we must now for a very brief space 
| accompany him. 

He had one room in the turret of Canonbury-house, which, since 
altered and subdivided, to within the last twenty years remained 
as it was in his time ; a genuine relic of Elizabeth's hunting seat. 
It was an old oak room on the first floor, with Gothic windows, 
pannelled wainscot, and a recess in its eastern corner for a large 
press bedstead, which doubtless the poet occupied. Canonbury- 
tower, with which Newbery had some connection as holding a lease 
or property in it (of which he gave the management to the 
Flemings), was for many years let out in this way, and had been 
the frequent resort of men connected with literature : but if, as at 
times alleged, any of Goldsmith's poetry was written here, it was 
written in the present autumn, and could have been but the 
fragments or beginnings of a poem ; for he did not return to the 
lodging. He now remained some weeks in it ; and is said to have 
been often found, during the time, among a social party of his 
fellow-lodgers (publishers Robinson and Francis Newbery, printers 
Baker and Hamilton, editor Beaufort afterwards of the Town and 
Country Magazine, poets Woty and Huddlestone Wynne, and 
pamphleteering parsons Rider and Sellon), presiding at the festive 
board of the Crown-tavern, in the Islington lower-road, where they 
had formed a kind of temporary club. At the close of the year he 

n 3 



274 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

had returned to the Temple, was in communication with Burke 
about his comedy, and was again pretty constant in his attendance 
at Gerrard-street. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



PATRONS OF LITERATURE. 1767. 

On his reappearance in London, Goldsmith found political 
excitement raging, and Burke still rising higher through 
•j,, /l3 „; the storm. He might have wondered to see, among the 
first acts of the new administration, his countryman and 
friend Robert Nugent, the most furious upholder of colonial 
taxation, selected for a lordship of the Board of Trade, and raised 
to the rank of Baron Nugent and Viscount Clare ; yet this was 
nothing to the marvel of seeing emanate, from Lord Chatham's 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, a new project for taxation of America. 
The rest of their career had been only less disgraceful ; nor is it 
possible, without some allusion to it, to exhibit properly that 
incident of Goldsmith's life with which this chapter will close. 

Violating public faith in their attack on the East India charter, 
they had sustained, from its resolute exposure by Mr. O'Bourke 
(as pompous Beckford, Lord Chatham's tool in the matter, persisted 
in calling Edmund), a most damaging blow. They had suffered an 
ignominious defeat, without precedent since Walpole's fall, on the 
question of continuing the land tax at four shillings ; which 
Dowdeswell succeeded in reducing to three, backed by all the 
country gentlemen, by the Bedfords and the Grenvilles, by the 
single partizan or so who still followed Newcastle, and by all the 
Rockinghams except Burke, who alone (" not having our number 
" of acres," said the top-booted gentlemen to each other) fell from 
his party on that question, and would not vote to lighten the land. 
They tasted as bitter humiliation in the later rejection of their 
overtures for help by the despised head of the last administration, 
who, manfully acting on Burke's warnings and suggestions, main- 
tained, in the meeting with the Bedfords at Newcastle-house, that 
the power of Lord Bute was still to be resisted ; resolutely refused 
to sanction any arrangement which would again expose America to 
the mercies of George Grenville ; and finally rejected the party com- 
bination which the old Duke of Newcastle, to get himself once more 
into office, had ever since he left office been labouring to effect ' ' tooth 
" and nail " (that is, says Horace Walpole, "with the one of each sort 



chap, xviii.] PATRONS OF LITERATURE. 275 

" that he has left, the old wretch !") And when, during the earlier 
progress of these confusions and disgraces, Chatham sullenly disap^ 
peared from the scene, and withdrew the last restraint from his 
ill-assorted colleagues, George Grenville, seeing his opportunity, 
had taunted the fiery Townshend to open rebellion. An agent 
from Connecticut, Jared Ingersoll, was present in the house (the 
reader will remember that these were not the days of reporters), 
and has described what passed. Grenville stopped suddenly in the 
midst of a powerful speech on the existing financial depression, 
and turning to the treasury bench, exclaimed : "You are cowards, 
" you are afraid of the Americans. You dare not tax America." 
r Fear !" cried Townshend from his seat : " fear ! cowards ! dare 
* f not tax America 1 I dare tax America ! " For a moment 
Grenville stood silent ; but immediately added, " Dare you tax 
r America 1 I wish to God I could see it ; " to which Townshend 
impetuously retorted, " I will, I will." The king's friends helped 
Grenville to keep the boaster to his pledge, and he redeemed it. 

But though he passed his Colonial Importation Duties bill as 
easily as a turnpike act, the ill-fated ministry knew no more peace. 
Conway began to languish for the army, Grafton looked wistfully 
to Newmarket, Shelburne made no secret of his discontent ; and 
the scenes that followed inflicted shame on all. Each, in his 
separate fashion, appealed against Townshend to Chatham, with- 
out, in any case, the courtesy of an answer. Townshend, with 
mimicry transcending Foote's, and wit that only Garrick writing and 
acting extempore scenes of Congreve was thought able to have 
equalled, rose from the seat still shared by his colleagues with 
himself, to burlesque them, to jeer at them, and, amid murmurs of 
wonder, admiration, applause, pity, and laughter, to assail even 
Chatham himself. Burke, strong with a power that could inform 
even ridicule with passion, rose from where he also still sat, behind 
the occupants of the treasury bench, to single out each for humili- 
ating contrast with Chatham's silence and scorn ; put up mock 
invocations to that absent, silent, sullen Chief of theirs, as a being 
before whom thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers 
(here, at each lofty phrase, amid shouts of laughter, waving 
his hand over the ministers), all veiled their faces with their wings ; 
and then, as in despair of reaching by argument a being so remote, 
passed into a prayer to this " Great Minister above, that rules and 
"governs over all," to have mercy upon them, and not destroy 
the work of his own hands. Augustus Hervey, to the regret of 
many, called him to order. " I have often suffered," cried Burke 
as he sat down, ' ' under persecutions of order ; but I did not 
" expect its lash while at my prayers. I venerate the great man, 
"and speak of him accordingly." Still the great man kept 



276 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. " [book hi. 

silence. He had the gout, and would not leave Bath ; he left 
Bath, and shut himself up in an inn at Marlborough ; he left 
Marlborough, and came to London. But nothing would induce 
him to see his colleagues ; not even the personal entreaties of the 
King. Would he, then, see himself, his majesty deigned to ask ? 
He pleaded gout (it seems to have been suppressed gout, a worse 
affliction, from which he was suffering), and retreated to North-end. 
But in a few days, having been seen by Lord Chesterfield riding 
about Hampstead-heath, again the King wrote " if you cannot come 
1 ' to me to-morrow, I am ready to call at North-end ; " and again, 
under cover of profuse submission, evasion did the work of refusal. 

By this time, in short, though labouring still with the bodily 
weakness which induced his first false step, Chatham seems to 
have discovered the drift of the King ; and what it really was 
that was meant to have been effected under cover of his own great 
name. One of his first remarks on his subsequent re-appearance 
in public, to the effect that ' ' the late good King had something 
" about him by which it was possible to know whether he liked 
" you or disliked you," was pointedly levelled at the good King's 
grandson ; and there can hardly be a doubt but that his majesty 
was now only fencing to obtain time, had already resolved upon 
a fresh arrangement of the offices, and, even from the moment of 
the new America-taxation scheme, had turned with decisive favour 
to Charles Townshend himself. The failure of the cry for help to 
the Rockinghams, however, so well kept together by Burke (whose 
lately published Correspondence explains many things before 
obscure), had been accompanied by a failure as decisive in respect 
to the Bedfords, whom the resolute Rigby held together, — before 
significant honours began to gather round Townshend. His 
brother, Lord Townshend, was made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 
his wife was dignified with a peerage as Pitt's had heretofore been, 
and the common talk had fixed upon himself for First Minister : 
when suddenly, on the 4th of September 1767, being then only 
forty-two, he died of a neglected fever ; in the changes consequent 
on his death, the compact confederacy of Bedfords, leaving George 
Grenville in the lurch, marched boldly into office ; the manceuv- 
rings and intrigues so long in progress, to the disgrace of every one 
concerned, received their shameless consummation in what was 
called the Grafton Ministry ; and when the Chancellorship of the 
Exchequer was accepted by Lord North, and Mr. Charles Jenkin- 
son (many years later created Lord Liverpool) was made a Lord of 
the Treasury, the royal satisfaction may be supposed to have been 
complete. 

North was the son of the princess dowager's intimate friend Lord 
Guildford : and scandal had not hesitated to find a reason for the 



chap, xviii.] PATRONS OF LITERATURE. 277 

extraordinary resemblance he presented to the King, in his clumsy 
figure, homely face, thick lips, light complexion and hair, bushy 
eye-brows, and protruding large grey eyes ; which, as Walpole 
says, rolled about to no purpose, for he was utterly short-sighted. 
Eut he was an abler man than the King, and had too many good 
as well as amiable qualities for the service in which he now con- 
sented to enlist them. He was a man of very various knowledge ; 
underneath his heavy exterior, singularly awkward manners, and 
what seemed to be a perpetual tendency to fall asleep, he concealed 
great promptness of parts, and an aptitude for business not a little 
extraordinary ; while the personal disinterestedness of his character, 
and the unalterable sweetness of his temper, carried him undoubt- 
edly through more public faults and miscarriages, with less of 
private hatred or dislike, than fell, to any minister's lot before or 
since his time. If he helped to ruin his country, he did it with 
the most perfect good humour ; and was always ready to surrender 
the profit as well as the credit of it, to "the King's private junto." 
Of that private junto Charles Jenkinson was the most active 
member. He had belonged to every ministry of the reign, except 
Lord Rockingham's. Now a year older than Goldsmith, he had 
started his public career as Goldsmith did, by writing in the 
Monthly Review ; but, tiring of the patronage of a bookseller, and 
discovering that whiggery was not the way to court, he wheeled 
suddenly round to toryism, offered his services to Lord Bute, and 
became the favourite's private secretary. Men grievously belied 
him, if he was not thenceforward the secret fetcher and carrier 
between Bute, the Princess, the House of Commons, and the King : 
nor did they scruple to say, that, by the lines of prudent caution 
in his face, by his stealthy, inscrutable, down-looking eyes (people 
who had read Gil Bias would call him pious signor Ordonez), by 
the twinkling dark-lanthorn motion of his half-closed eye-lids 
while he spoke, and by the absence of everything that savoured of 
imagination in him, nature had seemed to mark him out for pre- 
cisely such a service. His principles were simply what I have 
stated those of the junto to be ; and were now most pithily ex- 
pressed by Lord Barrington, the existing Secretary at War, who, 
while Lord North yet hesitated on the brink of the Chancellorship 
of the Exchequer, had eagerly volunteered to take the office. ' ' The 
King has long known," said the worthy Secretary, "that I am 
entirely devoted to him ; having no political connexion with any 
man, being determined never to form one, and conceiving that 
in this age the country and its constitution are best served by 
an unbiassed attachment to the crown." Amen, amen ! The 
Monarch is great and we are his Prophets, cried Mr. Jenkinson 
and his followers. 



278 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

And this was the close. To establish such a system as this, had 
cost the many public scandals of the last seven years ; the disgrace 
of eminent men, the disruptions of useful friendships, the violations 
of private as of public honour. For this, the country had been 
deluged with libels ; and men of station had put forth against 
their quondam associates, lampoons unapproachable in scurril 
violence by the lowest gazetteers of Grub-street or the Fleet. Nor 
was that part of the mischief to end with the mischief it helped to 
create. The poisoned chalice was to have its ingredients com- 
mended to other lips ; and already had significant indication been 
given that the lesson of libellous instruction would be taught to a 
wider school. One of Lord Sandwich's hired and paid libellers, 
parson Scott, had by the pungent slang of his letters (signed Anti- 
Sejanus) raised the sale of the Public Advertiser from fifteen 
hundred to three thousand a-day ; but letters of higher as well as 
more piquant strain had succeeded his in that respectable journal, 
and seemed to threaten no quiet possession to the power so lately 
seized. This new writer had as yet taken no settled signature, nor 
were his compositions so finished or powerful as those which made 
memorable the signature he took some twelve months later ; but 
there was something in his writing, even now, which marked it out 
from the class it belonged to. There was a strong individual grasp 
of the matters on which he wrote, a familiar scorn of the men he 
talked about, and a special hatred of the junto of king's-friends. 
His fervent abuse of the statesmen, such as Chatham, whom he 
afterwards exalted, has not been sufficiently referred to their 
existing relations with that faction which he hated with a private 
as well as public hatred ; and which also at this time as bitterly 
arrayed against Chatham, the brothers-in-law with whom he after- 
wards so cordially acted. It was as clear, from the first three letters of 
this writer, that he knew the "atoms " and their "original creating 
" cause," and that in the thick of "its own webs" he had seen 
" the venomous spider ; " as it seems to me now to be proved, if 
the strongest circumstantial as well as internal evidence can be 
held to prove anything, that he was throughout all his correspon- 
dence employed in the War-office, under that model king's-friend 
Lord Barrington himself. But be this as it might, his letters, 
variously and oddly signed, had thus early excited attention ; and 
would sufficiently, with other indications, have foretold the coming 
storm, even if the arch-priest of mischief had not suddenly himself 
arrived. Coolly, as if no outlawry existed, Wilkes crossed over to 
London ; and his first careless business was to send an exquisite 
French letter to Garrick with the address of Master Kitely, to ask 
him how he felt since his reconciliation with his wife. But none 
knew better than his quondam friend Sandwich what other business 



chap, xvin.] PATRONS OF LITERATURE. 279 

he was likely to have in hand. Though he had declined during 
the summer a " genteel letter " from Paoli, offering him a regiment 
in Corsica to advance the cause of liberty, he had put himself in 
motion at the first reasonable prospect of another campaign for 
liberty (and Wilkes) at home. No one could doubt that the 
struggle would be a sharp one, and the first care of ministers was 
directed to the press. 

Excellent reasons existed, therefore, as I have thus attempted 
to explain, for the great stress and storm which was now making 
itself felt in Downing-street. A necessity had unexpectedly ap- 
peared for better writers than the ordinary party hacks ; the new 
and formidable pen in the Public Advertiser was piercing the sides of 
ministers from week to week ; and the question naturally occurred 
to those ingenious gentlemen whether they might not, after all, 
become patrons of literature very serviceably to themselves. And 
hence it is that I am to introduce no less a person than a 
minister of the church, and chaplain to a minister of state, on a 
visit to the Temple to pay his respects to Goldsmith on his return 
from Canonbury-tower. 

Parson Scott, Sandwich's chaplain, was now busily going about 

to negociate for writers ; and a great many years afterwards, when 

he was a rich old Doctor of Divinity, related an anecdote which 

was to illustrate the folly of men who are ignorant of the world, 

and the particular and egregious folly of the author of the 

Traveller. He describes himself applying to Goldsmith, among 

others, to induce him to write in favour of the administration. l ' I 

i found him," he said, " in a miserable set of chambers in the 

' Temple. I told him my authority ; I told him that I was 

' empowered to pay most liberally for his exertions ; and, would 

' you believe it ! he was so absurd as to say, ' I can earn as much 

' ' as will supply my wants without writing for any party ; the assist- 

' c ance you offer is therefore unnecessary to me.' And so I left 

' him," added the reverend Dr. Scott indignantly, "in his garret." 

An impatience very natural to the holy man (who within four 

years had his reward in two fat crown livings), as a like emotion 

had been to Hawkins, the respectable Middlesex magistrate ; but 

on the other hand, a patience very natural to Goldsmith, and 

worthy of a noble remembrance. He knew, if ever man did, the 

chances he embraced in rejecting that offer. Easy is the transition 

from what the ministry were willing to do, if they could get return 

in kind ; to what, in the opposite case, they found it impossible to 

do. Poor Smollett had lately returned from foreign travel with 

shattered health and spirits, which he had vainly attempted to 

recruit in his native Scottish air ; and, feeling that a milder 

climate was his only hope, was now preparing again to go abroad 



280 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

for probably the last time, with hardly a hope of recovery, and 
very scanty means of support. He stated his case to Hume, and 
Hume went to Lord Shelburne. The matter was very simple. The 
consulships of Leghorn and of Nice were both vacant at this very 
time ; and, could, either be obtained for Smollett, there might yet 
be hope for his broken health, or for quiet and repose till death 
should come. But this could not be. Just as when Gray, having 
solicited from Lord Bute the office to which he had so righteous a 
claim, found it promised to the tutor of Sir James Lowther, so, a3 
to Hume's petition, Nice had "long been pre-engaged" by Lord 
Shelburne to the Spanish ambassador, Leghorn was under similar 
pledge to a friend of lawyer Dunning's, and there was no possi- 
bility of help for the author of Peregrine Pickle. In that state he 
was left till the following summer ; when, with the prospect now 
certain which earlier he had hoped might be averted, he wrote to 
bid Hume farewell before departing to " perpetual exile " ; and 
Hume could only grieve and say to his brother man-of-letters, that 
" the indifference of ministers towards literature, which has been 
" long, and indeed always, the case in England, gives little prospect 
' ' of any alteration in this particular. " There was nothing for it 
but that this writer of genius, worn out in the service of book- 
sellers, to whom his labours had been largely profitable ; of the 
public, whose hours of leisure or of pain he had lightened ; and of 
patrons, who at his utmost need deserted him ; should pass abroad 
to labour, and to die. One year longer he stayed in England ; 
published and proclaimed, in his last political romance, the 
universal falsehood of faction, his own remorse for having helped 
to sustain it, his farewell to the " rascally age," and the contempt 
for the Butes as well as Chathams it had for ever inspired him 
with ; and in another year, having meanwhile written Humphry 
Clinker, was buried in the churchyard at Leghorn, 



CHAPTER XIX. 



CLOSE OF A TWELVE YEARS' STRUGGLE. 1767. 

Such a possible fate as that of poor Smollett, common in all 

times in England and at this time nearly universal, was 

Mt ^9 something to reflect upon in those Garden- court chambers, 

which Mr. Scott, swelling with his brace of livings, can 

only deign to call a ' ' garret. " A poor enough abode they were, 

perhaps deserving only a little less contemptuous name : and here 



chap, xix.] CLOSE OF A TWELVE YEARS' STRUGGLE. 281 

Goldsmith found himself, after twelve years of hard struggle, 
doubtless unable at all times to repress, what is so often the 
unavailing bitterness of the successful as well as unsuccessful man, 
the consideration of what he had done compared with what he 
might have done. The chances still remain, nevertheless, that 
he might not have done it ; and the greater probability is that 
most people do what they are qualified to do, in the condition of 
existence imposed upon them. It is very doubtful to me, upon 
the whole, if Goldsmith, placed as he was throughout life, could 
have done better than he did. Beginning with not even the 
choice which Fielding admits was his, of hackney writer or 
hackney coachman, he has fought his way at last to consideration 
and esteem. But he bears upon him the scars of his twelve years' 
conflict ; of the mean sorrows through which he has passed, and 
of the cheap indulgences he has sought relief and help from. There 
is nothing plastic in his nature now. He is forty. His manners 
and habits are completely formed ; and in them any further success 
can make little favourable change, whatever it may effect for his 
mind or his genius. The distrusts which were taught him in his 
darkest humiliations, cling around him still ; and, by the fitful 
changes and sudden necessities which have encouraged the weak- 
ness of his natural disposition, his really generous and most 
affectionate nature will still continue to be obscured. It was 
made matter of surprise and objection against him, that though 
his poems are replete with fine moral sentiments and bespeak a 
great dignity of mind, yet he had no sense of the shame, nor 
dread of the evils, of poverty. How should he ? and to what good 
end ? Would it have been wisely done to engage in a useless 
conflict, to contest with what too plainly was his destiny, and 
gnaw the file for ever ? It is true that poverty brings along with 
it many disreputable compliances, disingenuous shifts and resources, 
most sordid and dire necessities ; much that, even while it helps 
to vindicate personal independence, may not be consistent with 
perfect self-respect. It is not a soil propitious to virtue and 
straightforwardness, often as they hardily grow there ; and it is 
well that it should be escaped from, as soon as may be. But 
there are worse evils. There is a worse subjection to poverty than 
the mere ceasing to regard it with dread or with shame. There is 
that submission to it which is implied in a servile adulation of 
wealth, to the exclusion of every sense of disgrace but that of 
being poor • and there is, on the other hand, a familiarity with it, 
a careless but not unmanly relation with its wants and shames, 
which, rightly used, may leave infinite enduring pleasure for its 
every transitory pain. Where is to be found, for example, such 
an intimate knowledge of the poor, such ready and hearty sympathy 



282 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

with, their joys and sorrows, such a strong social sentiment with 
what the kindliest observers too little heed, such zeal for all that 
can impart 

An hour's importance to the poor man's heart, 

as in Goldsmith's writings ? It is the real dignity of mind which 
only poverty can teach so well ; and when his friends admired it 
in his books, they might have questioned the value of their 
accompanying regret. Genius often effects its highest gains in a 
balance of what the world counts for disadvantage and loss ; and 
it has fairly been made matter of doubt, if Pope's body had been 
less crooked, whether his verses would have been so straight. In 
every man, wealthy or poor in fortune or in genius, we see the 
result of the many various circumstances which have made him 
what he is ; wisdom finds its aptest exercise in a charitable con- 
sideration of all those circumstances ; and, so far as any such result 
is discovered to have profited and pleased mankind, they will not be 
unwise to accept it in compensation for whatever pain or disad- 
vantage may have happened to attend it. 

The last section of Goldsmith's life and adventures is now arrived 
at; and in what remains to be described, there will appear more 
strange inconsistencies than have yet been noted. The contrast 
which every man might be made more or less to illustrate, of 
circumstances and pretensions, of ignorance and knowledge, of 
accomplishments and blunders, will, for the few years to come, 
take more decisive shape and greater prominence in Goldsmith. 
He will be more seen in a society for which his habits have least 
adapted him, and where the power to make mirth of his foibles 
was held to be but fair consolation for the inability to make denial 
of his genius. "Magnanimous Goldsmith, a gooseberry fool!" 
His reputation had been silently widening, in the midst and in 
despite of his humbler drudgery ; his poem, his novel, his essays, 
had imperceptibly but steadily enlarged the circle of his admirers ; 
and he was somewhat suddenly, at last, subjected to the social 
exactions that are levied on literary fame. But let the reader 
take along with him into these scenes what alone will enable him 
to judge them rightly. 

Conversation is a game where the wise do not always win. 
When men talk together, the acute man will count higher than the 
subtle man ; and he who, though infinitely far from truth, can 
handle a solid point of argument, will seem wiser than the man 
around whom truth " plays like an atmosphere," but who cannot 
reason as he feels. The one forms opinions unconsciously, the 
other none for which he cannot show specific grounds ; and it was 
not inaptly, though humorously, said by Goldsmith of himself, 



chap, xix.] CLOSE OF A TWELVE YEARS' STRUGGLE. 283 

that lie disputed best when nobody was by, and always got the 
better when he argued alone. Society exposed him to continual 
misconstruction ; so that few more touching things have been 
recorded of him than those which have most awakened laughter. 
" People are greatly mistaken in me," he remarked on one occasion. 
" A notion goes about that when I am silent, I mean to be impu- 
" dent ; but I assure you, gentlemen, my silence arises from 
" bashfulness." From the same cause arose the unconsidered talk 
which was less easily forgiven than silence ; with which we shall 
find so frequently mixed up, the imputations of vanity and of 
envy ; and to properly comprehend which, there must always be 
kept in mind the grudging and long-delayed recognition of his 
genius. Exceptions no doubt there were. Johnson, Burke, and 
Reynolds, were large exceptions ; and with what excellent effect 
upon his higher nature a sense of his growing fame with such men 
as these descended, will hereafter be plainly seen. Never is success 
obtained, if deserved, that it does not open and improve the mind ; 
and never had Goldsmith reason to believe the world in any 
respect disposed to do him justice, that he was not also most 
ready and desirous to do justice to others. But, even with the 
friends I have named, remained too much of the fondness of pity, 
the familiarity of condescension, the air of generosity, the habit of 
patronage ; too readily did these appear to justify an ill-disguised 
contempt, a sort of corporate spirit of disrespect, in the rest of the 
men-of-letters of that circle ; and when was the applause of even 
the highest, yet counted a sufiicient set-off against the depreciation 
of the lowest of mankind ? 

No one who thus examines the whole case can doubt, I think, 
that Goldsmith had never cause to be really content with his 
position among the men of his time, or with the portion of cele- 
brity at any period during his life assigned to him. All men can 
patronise the useful, since it so well caters for itself, but, many as 
there are to need the beautiful, there are few to set it forth, and 
fewer still to encourage it ; and even the booksellers who crowded 
round the author of the Vicar of Wakefield and the Traveller, came 
to talk but of booksellers' drudgery and catchpenny compilations. 
Is it strange that as such a man stood amid the Boswells, Murphys, 
Beatties, Bickerstaffs, Grahams, Kellys, Hawkinses, and men of 
that secondary class, unconscious comparative criticism should have 
risen in his mind, and taken the form of a very innocent vanity ? It 
is a harsh word, yet often stands for a harmless thing. May it not 
even be forgiven him if, in galling moments of slighting disregard, 
he made occasional silent comparison of Rasselas with the Vicar, 
of the Rambler with the Citizen of the World, of London with the 
Traveller ? " Doctor, I should be glad to see you at Eton," said 



284 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

Mr. George Graham, one of the Eton masters and author of an 
indifferent Masque of Telemachus, as he sat at supper with Johnson 
and Goldsmith, indulging somewhat freely in wine, and arrived at 
that pitch in his cups, when he gave this invitation, of looking at 
one man and talking to another. "I shall be glad to wait upon 
"you," answered Goldsmith. "No, no," replied Graham : "'tis 
"not you I mean, Doctor Minor; 'tis Doctor Major, there." 
"Now that Graham," said Goldsmith, afterwards, "is a fellow to 
"make one commit suicide;" and upon nothing graver than 
expressions such as this, have men like Hawkins inferred that he 
loved not Johnson but rather envied him for his parts. " Indeed," 
pursues the musical knight, " he once entreated a friend to desist 
"from praising Johnson ; 'for in doing so,' said he, 'you harrow 
" ' up my soul :' " which it may be admitted was not at all impro- 
bable, if it was Hawkins praising him ; for there is nothing so 
likely as a particular sort of praise to harrow up an affectionate 
soul. Such most certainly was Goldsmith's, and he loved with 
all his grateful heart whatever was loveable in Johnson. Bos well 
himself admits it, on more that one occasion ; and contradicts 
much of what he has chosen to say on others, by the remark that 
in his opinion Goldsmith had not really more of envy than other 
people, but only talked of it freely. 

That free talking did all the mischief. He was candid and 
simple enough to say aloud, what others would more prudently 
have concealed. "Here's such a stir," he exclaimed to Johnson 
one day, in a company at Thrale's, — -it was when London had 
gone mad about Beattie's common-place Essay on Truth, had 
embraced the author as "the long-delayed avenger of insulted 
" Christianity," and had at last treated, flattered, and caressed him 
into a pension of 200?. a-year, — " here's such a stir about a fellow 
"that has written one book, and I have written many." "Ah 
' ' Doctor ! " retorted Johnson, on his discontented, disregarded, 
unpensioned friend, "there go two-and-forty sixpences, you know, 
' ' to one guinea : " whereat the lively Mrs. Thrale claps her hands 
with delight, and poor Goldsmith can but sulk in a comer. Being 
an author, it is true, he had no business to be thus thin-skinned, 
and should rather have been shelled like a rhinoceros ; but a 
stronger man than he was, might have fretted with the irritation 
of such doubtful wit, and been driven to even intemperate resent- 
ment. Into that he never was betrayed. With all that at various 
times, and in differing degrees, depressed his honest ambition, 
riffled his pride, or invaded his self-respect, it will on the whole 
be very plain, by the time this narrative has closed, that no man 
more thoroughly, and even in his own despite, practised those 
giacious and golden maxims with which Edmund Burke this very 






chap, xix.] CLOSE OF A TWELVE YEARS' STRUGGLE. 285 

year rebuked the hasty temper of his protege Barry, and which 
every man should take for ever to his heart. " Who can live in 
"the world without some trial of his patience V asked the states- 
man of the young painter, who had fallen into petty disputes at 
Rome. And then he warned him that a man can never have a 
point of mere pride that will not be pernicious to him ; that we 
must be at peace with our species, if not for their sakes, yet very 
much for our own ; and that the arms with which the ill disposi- 
tions of the world are to be combated, and the qualities by which 
it is to be reconciled to us and we reconciled to it, are moderation, 
gentleness, a little indulgence to others, and a great deal of 
distrust of ourselves ; " which are not qualities of a mean spirit, 
f as some may possibly think them, but virtues of a great and 
1 'noble kind, and such as dignify our nature as much as they 
"contribute to our fortune and repose." 

Well would it have been for the subject of this biography, if 
the same justice which the world thus obtained from him, throughout 
their chequered intercourse, he had been able to obtain either from 
or for himself. It has not hitherto been concealed that, in what- 
ever respect society may have conspired against him, he is not 
clear of the charge of having aided it by his own weakness ; and 
still more evident will this be hereafter. With the present year 
ended his exclusive reliance on the booksellers, and, as though to 
mark it more emphatically, his old friend Newbery died ; but 
with the year that followed, bringing many social seductions in 
the train of the theatre, came a greater inability than ever to 
resist improvident temptation and unsuitable expense. His old 
habit of living merely from day to day, beset every better scheme 
of life ; the difficulty with which he earned money had not helped 
to teach him its value ; and he became unable to apportion wisely 
his labour and his leisure. The one was too violent, and the 
other too freely indulged. It is doubtful if the charge of gambling 
can be supported, to more than a very trifling extent : but in the 
midst of poverty he was too often profuse, into clothes and 
entertainments he threw money that should have liquidated debts, 
and he wanted courage and self-restraint to face the desperate 
arrears that still daily mounted up against him. Hardly ever did 
a new resource arise, that did not bring with it a new waste, and 
fresh demands upon his jaded powers. 

But before we too sternly pronounce upon genius sacrificed 
thus, and opportunities thrown away, let the forty years which 
have been described in this biography ; the thirty of unsettled 
habit and undetermined pursuit, the ten of unremitting drudgery 
and desolate toil ; be calmly retraced and charitably judged. 
Nor let us omit from that consideration the nature to which he 



286 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book hi. 

was born, the land in which he was raised, his tender temperament 
neglected in early youth, the brogue and the blunders which he 
described as his only'inheritance ; and when the gains are counted 
up which we owe to his genius, be it still with admission of its 
native and irreversible penalties. His generous warmth of heart, 
his transparent simplicity of spirit, his quick transitions from 
broadest humour to gentlest pathos, and that delightful buoyancy 
of nature which survived in every depth of misery, — who shall 
undertake to separate these from the Irish soil in which they grew, 
in which impulse still reigns predominant over conscience and 
reflection, where unthinking benevolence yet passes for considerate 
goodness, and the gravest duties of life are overborne by social 
pleasure, or sunk in mad excitement. Manful, in spite of all, was 
Goldsmith's endeavour, and noble its result. He did not again 
draw back from the struggle in which at last he had engaged ; 
unaided by a helping hand, he fought the battle out ; and much 
might yet have been retrieved when death arrived so suddenly. 
Pope remarks somewhere that few men live at present, properly 
speaking ; but are preparing to live at another time, which may or 
may not arrive. The other time was cut from under Goldsmith ; 
and out of such labour as his in the present, few men could have 
snatched time to live. " Ah !" he exclaimed to a young gentleman 
of fortune, who showed him a very elaborate manuscript : " Ah, 
" Mr. Cradock ! think of me, that must write a volume every 
"mouth !" Think of him, too, who wrote always in the presence 
of craving want, and, from his life's beginning to its end, had 
never known the assistance of a home. Eminently does his 
disposition seem to me to have been one which the domestic 
influences would have saved from the worst temptations, soon to 
be described, that beset his latter life ; could he but have been 
brought, by a happy marriage, within the tranquillising centre of 
home. It was said of Burke that his every care used to vanish, 
from the moment he entered under his own roof ; of himself 
Goldsmith could say no better, than that at home or abroad, 
in crowds or in solitude, he was still carrying on a conflict with 
unrelenting care. 

But one friend he had that never wholly left him, that in his 
need came still with comfort. Nature, who smiled upon him in 
his cradle, in this " garret" of Garden-court had not deserted 
him. Her school was open to him even here ; and, in the crowd 
and glare of streets, but a step divided him from her cool and 
calm refreshments. Among his happiest hours were those he 
passed at his window, looking over into the Temple-gardens. 
Steam and smoke were not yet so all prevailing, but that, right 
opposite where he looked, the stately stream which washes the 



chap. xix. CLOSE OF A TWELVE YEARS' STRUGGLE. 



287 



garden-foot might be seen, as though freshly " weaned from her 
" Twickenham Naiades," flowing gently past. JSTor had the 
benchers thinned the trees in those days ; for they were that race 
of benchers loved of Charles Lamb, who refused to pass in their 
treasurer's account u twenty shillings to the gardener for stuff to 
"poison the sparrows." So there he sat, with the noisy life of 
Fleet-street shut out, making country music for himself out of 
the noise of the old Temple rookery. Luther used to moralise 
the rooks ; and Goldsmith had illustrious example for the amuse- 
ment he now took in their habits, as from time to time he 
watched them. He saw the rookery, in the winter deserted, or 
guarded only by some five or six, " like 
" old soldiers in a garrison," resume its 
activity and bustle in the spring ; and 
he moralised, like the great reformer, 
on the legal constitutions established, 
the social laws enforced, and the par- 
ticular castigations endured for the good 
of the community, by those black-dressed 
and black-eyed chatterers. "I have 
" often amused myself," he says, " with 
" observing their plans of policy from my 
" window in the Temple, that looks 
" upon a grove where they have made 
" a colony in the midst of the city." 
Nor will we doubt that from this wall- 
girt grove, too, came many a thought 

that carried him back to childhood, made him free of solitudes 
explored in boyish days, and re-peopled deserted villages. It was 
better than watching the spiders amid the dirt of Green Arbour- 
court ; for though his grove was city-planted, and scant of the 
foliage of the forest, there was Fancy to piece out for him, tran- 
scending these, far other groves and other trees, 

. Annihilating all that's made 

To a green thought in a green shade. 

Let us leave him to this happiness for a time ; before we pass 
to the few short years of labour, enjoyment, 
his mortal existence closed. 




BOOK THE FOURTH, 



CHAPTEK I. 



THE GOOD-NATURED MAN. 1767—1768. 

It was little more than a month before the death of the elder 
Newbery, that Burke read the comedy of the Good-natured 
Man ; and thus, with mirth and sadness for its ushers, the j,' o'g 
last division of Goldsmith's life comes in. The bond of old 
and long-continued service, chequered as its retrospect was with mean 
and mortifying incidents, could hardly, without some regret, be 
snapped ; nor could the long-attempted trial of the theatre, 
painful as its outset had been, without some sense of cheerfulness 
and hope approach its consummation. Newbery died on the 
22nd of December, 1767 ; and the performance of the comedy 
was now promised for the 28th of the following January. 

Unavailingly, for special reasons, had Goldsmith attempted to get 

I it acted before Christmas. Quarrels had broken out among 

I the new proprietary of the theatre, and these were made ,, , ,\ 

J excuses for delay. Colman had properly insisted on his 

; right, as manager, to cast the part of Imogen to Mrs. Yates, 

I rather than to a pretty-faced simpering lady (Mrs. Lessingham) 

whom his brother proprietor, Harris, "protected;" and the 

violence of the dispute became so notorious, and threatened such 

danger to the new management, that the papers describe Garrick 

" growing taller" on the strength of it. Tall enough he certainly 

grew, to overlook something of the bitterness of Colman's first 

: desertion of him ; and civilities, perhaps arising from a sort of 

common interest in the issue of the Lessingham dispute, soon after 

. recommenced between the rival managers. Bickerstaff, — a clever 

and facile Irishman, who, ten years before, had somewhat 

o2 



292 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

suddenly thrown up a commission in the Marines, taken to theat- 
rical writing for subsistence, and since obtained repute as the 
author of Love in a Village and the Maid of the Mill, — was just 
now pressing Colman with his opera of Lionel and Clarissa ; and, 
in one of his querulous letters, seems to point at this resumption 
of intercourse with Garrick, whom he had himself offended by- 
beginning to write for Colman. "When I talked with you last 
"summer," he complains, writing on the 26th January 1768, "I 
' ' told you that it would be impossible to have my opera ready till 
"after Christmas, and named about the 20th January. You 
"received this with great goodness,- said you were glad of it, 
"because it would be the best time of the year for me, and then 
"told me that Mr. Goldsmith's play should come out before 
" Christmas ; and this you repeated, and assur'd me of, more than 
"once, in subsequent meetings. . . The fact is, you broke your 
"word with me, in ordering the representation of the Good- 
" natur'd Man in such a manner, that it must unavoidably 
"interfere with my opera. . . At the reading, it was said the 
" Good-natured Man should appear the Wednesday after ; but at 
"the same time it was whispered to me, that it was privately 
" determined not to bring it out till the Saturday fortnight, and 
' ' that there was even a promise given to Mr. Kelly that it should 
u not appear till after his nights were over." 

If such a promise had been given (and circumstances justify the 
suspicion), Goldsmith had better reason than has been hitherto 
supposed, for that dissatisfaction with Colman and difference with 
Kelly which attended the performance of his comedy. Kelly had 
been taken up by Garrick, in avowed and not very generous 
rivalry to himself ; it was the town talk, some weeks before either 
performance took place, that the two comedies, written as they 
were by men well known to each other and who had lived the 
same sort of life, were to be pitted each against the other ; and so 
broadly were they opposed in character and style, that the first in 
the field, supposing it well received, could hardly fail to be a 
stumbling-block, to its successor. Kelly had sounded the depths 
of sentimentalism. I have mentioned the origin of that school as 
of much earlier date ; nor can it be doubted that it was with 
Steele the unlucky notion began, of setting comedy to reform the 
morals, instead of imitating the manners, of the age. Fielding 
slily glances at this, when he makes Parson Adams declare the 
Conscious Lovers to be the only play fit for a Christian to see, and* 
as good as a sermon ; and in so witty and fine a writer as Steele, 
so great a mistake is only to be explained by the intolerable 
grossness into which the theatre had fallen in his day. For often 
does it happen in such reaction, that good and bad suffer together ; 



chaf. i.] THE GOOD-NATURED MAN 293 

and that while one has the sting taken out of it, the other loses 
energy and manhood. Where a sickly sensibility overspreads 
both vice and virtue, we are in the right to care as little for the 
one as for the other ; since it is Life that the stage and its actors 
should present to us, and not anybody's moral or sentimental 
view of it. A most masterly critic of our time, William Hazlitt, 
has disposed of Steele's pretensions as a comic dramatist ; and 
poor Hugh Kelly, who has not survived to our time, must be 
disinterred to have his pretensions judged : yet the stage conti- 
nues to suffer, even now, from the dregs of the sentimental school, 
and it would not greatly surprise me to see the comedy with which 
Kelly's brief career of glory began, again lift up a sickly head 
amongst us. 

It is not an easy matter to describe that comedy. One can 
hardly disentangle, from the maze of cant and makebelieve in 
which all the people are involved, what it precisely is they drive 
at ; but the main business seems to be, that there are three 
couples in search of themselves throughout the five acts, and 
enveloped in such a haze or mist of False Delicacy (the title of the 
piece) that they do not. till the last, succeed in finding themselves. 
There is a Lord who has been refused, for no reason on earth, by 
a Lady Betty who loves him ; and who, with as little reason and as 
much delicacy on his own side, transfers his proposals to a friend 
of Lady Betty's whom he does not love, and selects her ladyship 
to convey the transfer. There is Lady Betty's friend, who, being 
in love elsewhere, is shocked to receive his lordship's proposals ; 
but, being under great obligations to Lady Betty, cannot in 
delicacy think of opposing what she fancies her ladyship has set 
her heart upon. There is a mild young gentleman, who is 
knocked hither and thither like a shuttlecock ; now engaged to this 
young lady whom he does not love, now dismissed by that whom 
he does ; and made at last the convenient means of restoring, with 
all proper delicacy, Lady Betty to his lordship. There is a young 
lady who in delicacy ought to marry the mild young gentleman, 
but indelicately prefers instead to run away with a certain Sir 
Harry. There is Sally her maid, who tells her mistress that she 
has transported her poor Sally "by that noble resolution" (to run 
away). And there is the delicate old Colonel her father, who 
plays eaves-dropper to her plan of flight ; intercepts her in the act 
of it ; gives her, in the midst of her wickedness, 20,000Z. (which he 
pulls out of a pocket-book), because he had promised it when she 
was good j and tells her to banish his name entirely from her 
i emembrance, and be as happy as she can with the consciousness of 
having broken an old father's heart. There are only*two people in 
the play with a glimmering of common sense or character, an 



294 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

eccentric widow, and a slovenly old bachelor : who are there to do 
for the rest what the rest have no power to do for themselves ; 
and, though not without large infusions of silly sentimentality and 
squeamish charity, to bring back enough common sense to furnish 
forth a catastrophe. It is the most mechanical of contrivances : 
yet it is the proof, if any were wanting, that such a piece has no 
life in itself ; and it is the distinguishing quality, which, thanks 
to Mr. Kelly's example, in proportion as reality or character is 
absent from a modern comedy, will still be found its chief resource. 
Examples need not be cited. Mr. Kelly's style will never want 
admirers. While it saves great trouble and wit to both actor and 
author, it exacts of an audience neither judgment nor discrimina- 
tion ; and, with an easy indolent indulgence of such productions, 
there will always be mixed up a sort of secret satisfaction in their 
mouthing morals, and lip-professions of humanity. 

Let us not be so hard on our grandfathers and grandmothers 
for having taken so mightily to Mr. Kelly's False Delicacy, as not 
to admit thus much. It had every advantage, too, in its produc- 
tion. Garrick not only wrote a prologue and epilogue, and was 
said to have heightened the old bachelor played by King, but 
went out of his way to induce Mrs. Dancer to forgive the abuse 
she had received in Mr. Kelly's Thespis, and act the widow. 
Produced on Saturday the 23rd of January, it was received with 
such singular favour, that, though the management was under a 
solemn pledge " not for the future to run any new piece nine nights 
" successively," it was played eight nights without intermission, 
and in the course of the season repeated more than twenty times. 
The publisher announced, the morning after its publication, that 
three thousand copies of it had been sold before two o'clock ; so 
unabated did its interest continue, that it had sold ten thousand 
before the season closed, Kelly had received a public breakfast at 
the Chapter coffee-house, and its publisher had expended twenty 
pounds upon a piece of plate as a tribute to his genius ; it was 
translated into German, and (by order of the Marquis de Pombal) 
into Portuguese, while its French translation, by Garrick's lively 
friend Madame Kiccoboni, had quite a run in Paris ; — and to sum 
up all in a word, False Delicacy became the rage. 

Poor Goldsmith may be forgiven if the sudden start of such 
success a little dashed his hopes at the last rehearsals of his Good- 
natured Man. Colman had lost what little faith he ever had in 
it ; Powell protested he could do nothing with Honeywood ; 
Harris and Rutherford had from the first taken little part in 
it ; nor, with the exception of Shuter, were the actors more hopeful 
than the management. Goldsmith always remembered this 
timely good opinion of the excellent comedian, as well as the 



chap, i.] THE GOOD-NATURED MAN. 295 

praise proffered him by a pretty actress (Miss Wilford, just become 
Mrs. Bulkley, of whom more hereafter), who played Miss Richland. 
What stood him most in stead, however, was the unwavering 
kindness of Johnson, who not only wrote the prologue he had 
promised, but went to see the comedy rehearsed ; and as, some 
half century before, Swift had stood by Addison's side at the 
rehearsal of his tragedy, wondering to hear the drab that played 
Cato's daughter laughing in the midst of her passionate part, and 
crying out What's next ? one may imagine the equal wonder with 
which the kind-hearted sage by Goldsmith's side heard the mirth 
he so heartily admired, and had himself so loudly laughed at, 
rehearsed with doleful anticipations. The managerial face appears 
to have lengthened in exact proportion as the fun became broad ; 
and when, against the strongest remonstrance, it was finally 
determined to retain the scene of the bailiffs, Colman afterwards 
told his friends that he had lost all hope. 

The eventful night arrived at last ; Friday the 29fch of January. 
It was not a club night, though the evening of meeting was 
ultimately altered from Monday to this later day to suit a general 
convenience ; but a majority of the members, following Johnson's 
and Burke's example, attended the theatre, and agreed to close 
the evening in Gerrard-street. Cooke, now Goldsmith's neighbour 
in the Temple, and whom he had lately introduced to his 
Wednesday club, was also present ; and has spoken of what befell. 
Mr. Bensley, a stage lover of portentous delivery, seems to have 
thrown into the heavy opening of Johnson's prologue, 

Prest by the load of life, the weary mind 
Surveys the general toil of human kind, 

a ponderous gloom, which, at the outset, dashed the spirits of the 
audience. Nor did Mr. Powell's Honeywood mend matters much, 
with the more cheerful opening of the play. He had complained, 
at the rehearsals, that the part gave him "no opportunity of 
"displaying his abilities;" and this it now became his care to 
make manifest. " Uniform tameness, not to say insipidity," was 
his contribution to the illustration of Honeywood. " He seemed, 
"from the beginning to the end, to be a perfect disciple of Zeno." 
Shuter, on the other hand, going to work with Croaker after a 
different fashion, soon warmed the audience into his own enjoy- 
ment, and shocked the sentimentalists among them with the 
boisterous laughter he sent ringing through the house ; nor was he 
ill seconded by the Lofty of Woodward, another excellent comedian, 
the effect of whose "contemptuous patronage" of Honeywood was 
long remembered. But then came the bailiffs ; on whom, being 
poorly acted, and presenting no resistance that way, the disaffected 



296 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book it. 

party were able to take full revenge for what they thought the 
indelicacy of all such farcical mirth. Accordingly, when good 
Mr. Twitch described his love for humanity, and Little Flanigan 
cursed the French for having made the beer threepence half-penny 
a pot, Cooke tells us that he heard people in the pit cry out this 
was "low" ("language uncommonly low," said the worthy 
London Chronicle in its criticism), and disapprobation was very 
loudly expressed. The comedy, in short, was not only trembling 
in the balance, but the chances were decisively adverse, when 
Shuter came on with the "incendiary letter" in the last scene of 
the fourth act, and read it with such inimitable humour that it 
carried the fifth act through. To be composed at so trury comic 
an exhibition, says Cooke, "must have exceeded all power of face; 
" even the rigid moral-mongers joined the full-toned roar of 
' ' approbation. " Poor Goldsmith, meanwhile, had been suffering 
exquisite distress ; had lost all faith in his comedy, and in himself ; 
and, when the curtain fell, could only think of his debt of grati- 
tude to Shuter. He hurried round to the green-room, says Cooke ; 
" thanked him in his honest, sincere manner, before all the 
" performers ; and told him he had exceeded his own idea of 
" the character, and that the fine comic richness of his colouring 
"made it almost appear as new to him as to any other person in 
" the house." Then, with little heart for doubtful congratulations, 
he turned off to meet his friends in Gerrard-street. 

By the time he arrived there, his spirits had to all appearance 
returned. He had forgotten the hisses. The members might 
have seen that he ate no supper, but he chatted gaily, as if 
nothing had happened amiss. Nay, to impress his friends still 
more forcibly with an idea of his magnanimity, he even sung his 
favourite song, which he never consented to sing but on special 
occasions, about An Old Woman tossed in a Blanket seventeen 
times as high as the Moon ; and was altogether very noisy and 
loud. But some time afterwards, when he and Johnson were 
dining with Percy at the chaplain's table at St. James's, he 
confessed what his feelings this night had really been ; made, 
said Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, a very comical and unnecessarily 
exact recital of them ; and told how the night had ended. 
"All this while," he said, "I was suffering horrid tortures; and 
"verily believe that if I had put a bit into my mouth it would 
' ' have strangled me on the spot, I was so excessively ill ; but I 
' ' made more noise than usual to cover all that, and so they never 
"perceived my not eating, nor I believe at all imaged to themselves 
"the anguish of my heart. But when all were gone except 
"Johnson here, I burst out a-crying, and even swore by — that I 
"would never write again." Johnson sat in amazement while 






CHAP. I.J 



THE GOOD-NATURED MAN. 



297 




Goldsmith made the confession, and then confirmed it. "All 
"which, Doctor," he said, "I thought had been a secret between 
" yon and me ; and I am sure I 
" would not have said anything 
" about it, for the world." That 
is very certain. !No man so un- 
likely as Johnson, when he had 
a friend's tears to wipe away, 
critically to ask himself, or after- 
wards discuss, whether or not 
they ought to have been shed ; 
but none so likely, if they came 
to be discussed by others, to tell 
you how much he despised them. 
What he says must thus be 
taken with what he does, more 
especially in all his various opi- 
nions of Goldsmith. When Mrs. 
Thrale asked him of this matter, 
he spoke of it with contempt, 

and said that "no man should be expected to sympathise with the 
"sorrows of vanity." But he had sympathised with them, at 
least to the extent of consoling them. Goldsmith never flung 
himself in vain on that great, rough, tender heart. The weak- 
ness he did his best to hide from even the kindly Langton, from 
the humane and generous Reynolds, was sobbed out freely there ; 
nor is it difficult to guess how Johnson comforted him. "Sir," 
he said to Boswell, when that ingenious young gentleman, now a 
practising Scotch advocate, joined him a month or two later at 
Oxford, and talked slightingly of the Good-natured Man ; "it is 
" the best comedy that has appeared since the Provoked Husband. 
" There has not been of late any such character exhibited on the 
" stage as that of Croaker. False Delicacy is totally devoid of 
" character." WTio can doubt that Goldsmith had words of reassur- 
ance at the least as kindly as these to listen to, as he walked home 
that night from Gerrard-street with Samuel Johnson ? 

!Nor were other and substantial satisfactions wanting. His 
comedy was repeated with increased effect on the removal of the 
bailiffs, and its announced publication excited considerable interest. 
Griffin was the publisher ; paid him 50Z. the day after its appear- 
ance : and in announcing a new edition the following week, stated 
that the whole of the first "large impression" had been sold on 
the second day. But perhaps Goldsmith's greatest pleasure in 
connection with the printed comedy was, that he could " shame 
"the rogues" and print the scene of the bailiffs. Now-a-days it 

o3 



, 



298 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book it. 

is difficult to understand the objection which condemned it, urged 
most strongly, as we find it, by the coarsest writers of the time. 
When such an attempt as Honeywood's to pass off the bailiffs for 
his friends, gets condemned as unworthy of a gentleman, comedy 
seems in sorry plight indeed. "The town will not bear Gold- 
" smith's low humour," writes the not very decent Hoadly, the 
bishop's son, to Garrick, "and justly. It degrades his Good- 
" natur'd Man, whom they were taught to pity and have a sort of 
"respect for, into a low buffoon; and, what is worse, into a 
"falsifier, a character unbecoming a gentleman." Happily for us, 
Goldsmith printed the low humour notwithstanding. It had been 
cut out in the acting, he said, in deference to the public taste, 
"grown of late, perhaps, too delicate ;" and was now replaced in 
deference to the judgment of a few friends, "who think in a 
"particular way." The particular way became more general, 
when his second comedy laid the ghost of sentimentalism ; and one 
is glad to know that, though it was but the year before his death, 
he saw his -well-beloved bailiffs restored to the scene, of which they 
have ever since, in that piece, been the most popular attraction. 
With the play, the prologue of course was printed ; and here 
Goldsmith had another satisfaction, in the alteration of a line that 
had been laughed at. "Don't call me our little bard," he said 
to Johnson, and " our anxious bard" was good-naturedly substi- 
tuted. But what Boswell interposes on this head simply shows us 
how uneasy he was, not when Johnson's familiar diminutives, 
more fond than respectful, were used by himself, but when they 
passed into the mouths of others. " I have often desired 
"Mr. Johnson not to call me Goldy," was his complaint to 
Davies. It was a courteous way of saying, " I wish you wouldn't 
"call me Goldy, whatever Mr. Johnson does." 

The comedy was played ten consecutive nights : their majesties 
commanding it on the fifth night (a practice not unwise, though 
become unfashionable) ; and the third, sixth, and ninth, being 
advertised as appropriated to the author. But though this seems 
a reasonably fair success, there is no reason to doubt Cooke's 
statement, that, even with the sacrifice of the bailiffs, it rather 
dragged, than supported itself buoyantly, through the remainder 
of the season. Shuter gave it an eleventh night, a month later, 
by selecting it for his benefit ; when Goldsmith, in a fit of extrava- 
gant good nature, sent him ten guineas (perhaps at the time the 
last he had in the world) for a box ticket. It was again, after an 
interval of three years, played three nights ; and it was selected 
for Mrs. • Green's benefit the second year after that, when the 
bailiffs reappeared. This is all I can discover of its career upon 
the stage while the author yet lived to enjoy it. 






chap, ii.] SOCIAL ENTERTAINMENTS. 299 



CHAPTER II. 



SOCIAL ENTERTAINMENTS, HUMBLE CLIENTS, AND 
SHOEMAKER'S HOLIDAYS. 1768. 

On the stage, ' then, the success of Goldsmith's comedy of the 

Good-natured Man was far from equal to its claims of cha- 

1 768 
racter, wit, and humour ; yet its success, in other respects, -J, /„ 

very sensibly affected its author's ways of life. His three 
nights had produced him nearly 4,001. ; Griffin had paid him 1001. 
more ; and for any good fortune of this kind, his past fortunes had 
not fitted him. So little, he would himself say, was he used to receive 
"money in a lump," that when Newbery made him his first advance 
of twenty guineas, his embarrassment was as great as Captain Brazen's 
in the play, whether he should build a privateer or a play-house 
with the money. He now took means hardly less effective to 
disembarrass himself of the profits of his comedy. " He descended 
"from his attic story in the Staircase, Inner Temple," says Cooke 
(who here writes somewhat hastily, one descent from the " attic" 
having already been made), " and purchased chambers in Brick- 
" court, Middle Temple, for which he gave four hundred pounds." 
They were number two on the second floor, on the right hand 
ascending the staircase : and consisted of two reasonably-sized old- 
fashioned rooms, with a third smaller room or sleeping-closet, 
which he furnished handsomely, with "Wilton" carpets, "blue- 
"morine-covered" mahogany sofas, blue morine curtains, chairs 
corresponding, chimney glasses, Pembroke and card tables, and 
tasteful book-shelves. Thus, and by payment for the lease of the 
chambers, the sum Cooke mentions would seem to have been 
expended ; and with it began a system of waste and debt, involving 
him in difficulties he never surmounted. The first was in the 
shape of money borrowed from Mr. Edmund Bott, a barrister who 
occupied the rooms opposite his, on the same floor ; who remained 
very intimate with him for the rest of his life ; and whose trea- 
tise on the Poor Laws is supposed to have received revision and 
improvement from his pen. Exactly below Goldsmith's were the 
chambers of Mr. Blackstone ; and the rising lawyer, at this time 
finishing the fourth volume of his Commentaries, is reported to 
have made frequent complaint of the distracting social noises that 
went on above. A Mr. Children succeeded him, and made the 
same complaint. 



300 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

The nature of the noises niay be presumed from what is stated 
on the authority of a worthy Irish merchant settled in London 
(Mr. Seguin), to two of whose children Goldsmith stood god- 
father ; and whose intimacy with the poet descended as an heir- 
loom to his family, by whom every tradition of it has been carefully 
cherished. Members of this family recollected also other Irish 
friends (a Mr. Pollard, of Castle Pollard, and his wife) who visited 
London at this time, and were entertained by Goldsmith. They 
remembered dinners at which Johnson, Percy, Bickerstaff, Kelly, 
"and a variety of authors of minor note," were guests. They 
talked of supper parties with younger people, as well in the 
London chambers as in suburban lodgings ; preceded by blind- 
man's buff, forfeits, or games of cards ; and where Goldsmith, 
festively entertaining them all, would make frugal supper for him- 
self off boiled milk. They related how he would sing all kinds 
of Irish songs ; with what special enjoyment he gave the Scotch 
ballad of Johnny Armstrong (his old nurse's favourite) ; how cheer- 
fully he would put the front of his wig behind, or contribute in 
any other way to the general amusement ; and to what accom- 
paniment of uncontrollable laughter he " danced a minuet with 
"Mrs. Seguin." 

Through all the distance of time may not one see even yet, 
moving through the steps of the minuet, that clumsy little figure, 
those short thick legs, those plain features, — all the clumsier and 
plainer for the satin-grain coat, the garter-blue silk breeches, the 
gold sprig buttons, and the rich straw-coloured tamboured waist- 
coat, — yet with every sense but of honest gladness and frank 
enjoyment lost in the genial good-nature, the beaming mirth and 
truth of soul, the childlike glee and cordial fun, which turns into 
a cheerful little hop the austere majesty of the stateliest of all the 
dances ? Nor let me omit from these agreeable memories a 
delightful anecdote which the same Mr. Ballantyne who has told 
us of the Wednesday-club pleasantly preserves for us in his 
Mackliniana. It introduces to us the scene of another " cheerful 
"little hop," which, at about this time also, Macklin the actor 
gave at his house, when " Doctor Goldsmith, the facetious 
"Doctor Glover, Fenton the accomplished Welsh bard, and the 
"humane Tom King the comedian, were of the party." On this 
occasion so entirely happy was Goldsmith, that he danced and 
threw up his wig to the ceiling, and cried out that "men were 
"never so much like men as when they looked like boys!" 
Little of the self-satisfied importance which Boswell is most 
fond of connecting with him, is to be discovered in recollections 
like these. 

And they are confirmed by Cooke's more precise account of 



chap. ii. J SOCIAL ENTERTAINMENTS. 301. 

scenes lie witnessed at the Wednesday-club, where Goldsmith's 
more intimate associates seem now to have attempted to restrain 
the too great familiarity he permitted to the humbler members. 
An amusing instance is related. The fat man who sang songs had 
a friend in a certain Mr. B, described as a good sort of man and 
an eminent pig-butcher ; who piqued himself very much on his 
good fellowship with the author of the Traveller, and whose constant 
manner of drinking to him was, " Come, Noll, here's my service to 
"you, old boy !" Repeating this one night after the comedy was 
played, and when there was a very full club, Glover went over to 
Goldsmith, and said in a Avhisper that he ought not to allow such 
liberties. "Let him alone," answered Goldsmith, "and you'll see 
"how civilly I'll let him down." He waited a little ; and, on the 
next pause in the conversation, called out aloud, with a marked 
expression of politeness and courtesy, ' ' Mr. B, I have the honour 
"of drinking your good health." " Thanke'e, thanke'e, Noll;" 
returned Mr. B, pulling his pipe out of his mouth, and answering 
with great briskness. " Well, where's the advantage of your 
"reproof?" asked Glover. "In truth," remarked Goldsmith, 
with an air of good-humoured disappointment, intended to give 
greater force to a stroke of meditated wit, " I give it up ; I ought 
"to have known before now, there is no putting a pig in the 
"right way." 

The same authority informs us of liberties not quite so harmless 
as Mr. B's, and wit quite as flat as Goldsmith's, practised now and 
then on the poet for more general amusement, by the choicer 
spirits of the Globe. For example, he had come into the club- 
room one night, eager and clamorous for his supper, having been 
out on some " shooting party," and taken nothing since the 
morning. The wags were still round the table, at which they had 
been enjoying themselves, when a dish of excellent mutton chops, 
ordered as he came in, was set before the famishing poet. Instantly 
one of the company rose, and went to another part of the room. 
A second pushed his chair away from the table. A third showed 
more decisive signs of distress, connecting it with the chops in a 
manner not to be mistaken. "How the waiter could have dared 
"to produce such a dish!" was at last the reluctant remark to 
Goldsmith's alarmed inquiries. " Why, the chops were offensive ; 
1 the fellow ought to be made to eat them himself." Anxious for 
supper as he was, the plate was at once thrust from him ; the 
waiter violently summoned into the room ; and an angry order 
given that he should try to make his own repast, of what he had 
so impudently set before a hungry man. The waiter, now conscious 
of a trick, complied with affected reluctance ; and Goldsmith, more 
quickly appeased . than enraged, as his wont was, ordered a fresh 



302 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

supper for himself, " and a dram for the poor devil of a waiter, 
"who might otherwise get sick from so nauseating a meal." 

Before I pass from these humble records of the Wednesday- club, 
it will be proper to mention Kelly's withdrawal from it. f Alleged 
attacks by Goldsmith on his comedy having been repeated to ln'rrt 
with exaggerations, Kelly resolved to resent the unfriendliness. 
"What the exact character of their friendship had been, I cannot 
precisely ascertain ; but though recent, it had probably for a time 
been intimate. Kelly succeeded Jones as editor of the Public 
Ledger, and the mutual connexion with Newbery must have 
brought them much together ; we find Kelly, as the world and its 
prospects became brighter with him, moving into chambers in the 
Temple, near Goldsmith's ; nor is it difficult to believe the report 
of which I have found several traces, that but for his sensible 
remonstrance on the prudential score, his wife's sister, who lived 
in his house and was pretty and poor as his wife, being simply, as 
she had been, an expert and industrious needlewoman, would have 
been carried off and wedded by Goldsmith. Since their respective 
comedies they had not met ; when, abruptly encountering each 
other one night in the Covent-garden green-room, Goldsmith 
stammered out awkward congratulations to Kelly on his recent 
success, to which the other, prepared for war, promptly replied 
that he could not thank him because he could not believe him. 
"From that hour they never spoke to one another :" and Kelly, 
reluctant that Goldsmith should be troubled to "do anything more 
"for him," resigned the club. The latter allusion was (by way of 
satire) to a story he used to tell of the terms of Goldsmith's 
answer to a dinner invitation which he had given him. " I would 
" with pleasure accept your kind invitation," so ran the whimsical 
and very pardonable speech, "but to tell you the truth, my dear 
"boy, my Traveller has found me a home in so many places, that 
"I am engaged, I believe, three days. Let me see. To-day I 
"dine with Edmund Burke, to-morrow with Doctor Nugent, and 
" the next day with Topham Beauclerc ; but I'll tell you what 
il Fll do for you, I'll dine with you on Saturday." Now Kelly, 
though conceited and not very scrupulous, was not an ill-natured 
man, on the whole ; he wrote a novel called Louisa Mildmay,' 
which, with some scenes of a questionable kind of warmth, an ill- 
natured man could not have written ; but he was not justified in 
the tone he took during this quarrel, and after it. It was not for 
him to sneer at Goldsmith's follies, who was for nothing more 
celebrated than for his own unconscious imitations of them ; who 
was so fond, in his little gleam of prosperity, of displaying on hia 
sideboard the plate he possessed, that he added to it his silver 
spurs ; and who, even as he laughed at his more famous country- 



chap, ii.] SOCIAL ENTERTAINMENTS. 803 

man's Tyrian bloom and satin, was displaying his own corpulent 
little person at all public places in "a flaming broad silver-laced 
" waistcoat, bag- wig, and sword." 

Mr. William Filby's bill marks the 21st of January as the day 
when the " Tyrian bloom satin-grain, and garter-blue silk breeches" 
(charged 81. 2s. *7d.) were sent home ; and doubtless this was the 
suit ordered for the comedy's first night. Within three months, 
Mr. Filby having meanwhile been paid his previous year's account 
by a draught on Griffin, another more expensive suit ("lined with 
"silk, and gold buttons") was supplied; and in three months more, 
the entry on the same account of " a suit of mourning," furnished 
on the 16th of June, marks the period of Henry Goldsmith's 
death. At the close of the previous month, in the village of 
Athlone, had terminated, at the age of forty-five, that brother's 
life of active piety, and humble but noble usefulness, whose unpre- 
tending Christian example, far above the worldlier fame he had 
himself acquired, his brother's genius has consecrated and pre- 
served for ever. Shortly after he had tidings of his loss, the 
character of the Village Preacher was most probably writttn ; for 
certainly the lines which immediately precede it were composed 
about a month before. From his father and his brother alike, 
indeed, were drawn the exquisite features of this sketch ; but of 
the so recent grief we may find marked and unquestionable trace, 
as well in the sublime and solemn image at the close, as in those 
opening allusions to Henry's unworldly contentedness, which 
already he had celebrated, in prose hardly less beautiful, by 
that dedication to the Traveller which he put forth and paraded 
with as great a sense of pride derived from it as though it pro- 
claimed the patronage of a prince or noble. Now too is repeated, 
with yet greater earnestness, his former tribute to his brother's 
hospitality. 

A man lie was to all the country dear ; 

And passing rich with forty pounds a year. . . . 

His house was known to all the vagrant train ; 

He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain : 

The long-remember'd beggar was his guest, 

"Whose beard descending swept his aged breast ; 

The ruin'd spendthrift, now no longer proud, 

Claim' d kindred there, and had his claims allow' d ; 

The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay, 

Sat by his fire, and talk'd the night away ; 

Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done, 

Shoulder'd his crutch and show'cl how fields wei'e won. . . . 

At church, with meek and unaffected grace, 
His looks adorn'd the venerable place ; 
Truth from his lips prevail' d with double sway, 
And fools who came to scoff remain'd to pray. 



304 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book tv. 

The service pass'd, around the pious man, 

With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran ; 

Even children follow' d, with endearing wile, 

And pluck'd his gown, to share the good man's smile : 

His ready smile a parent's warmth express'd. 

Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distress' d. 

To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, 

But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven : 

As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, 

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, 

Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, 

Eternal sunshine settles on its head. 

The idea of the Deserted Village was thrown out at the close 

of the Traveller, 

(Have we not seen, at pleasure's lordly call, 
The smiling long-frequented village fall ? 
Beheld the duteous son, the sire decay" d, 
The modest matron, and the blushing maid, 
Forc'd from their homes. . .) 

and on the general glad acceptance of that poem he had at once 
turned his thoughts to its successor. The subject of the growth 
of trade and opulence in England, of the relation of labour to the 
production of wealth, and of the advantage or disadvantage 
of its position in reference to manufactures and commerce, 
or as connected with the cultivation of land, which, two years 
after the Traveller appeared, Adam Smith exalted into a philo- 
sophic system by the publication of his immortal Inquiry into 
the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, was one that 
Goldsmith had frequently adverted to in his earliest writings, and 
on which his views "were undoubtedly less sound than poetical. 
It may be worth remark, indeed, that a favourite subject of reflec- 
tion as this theme always was with him, and often as he adverts 
to such topics connected with it as the effects of luxury and wealth 
on the simpler habits of a people, it is difficult to believe that he 
had ever arrived at a settled conclusion in his own mind, one way 
or the other. What he pleads for in his poetry, his prose for the 
most part condemns. Thus the argument of the Deserted Village 
is distinctly at issue with the philosophy of the Citizen of the 
World, in which he reasons that to the accumulation of wealth 
may be assigned not only the greatest part of our knowledge, but 
even of our virtues ; and exhibits poets, philosophers, and even 
patriots, marching in luxury's train. On the other hand, he 
occasionally again breaks out (as in the Animated Nature) 
into complaints as indignant as they are shallow and ill founded, 
that "the rich should cry out for liberty while they thus starve 
"their fellow-creatures" (he is alluding to the obligation on the 






chap, ii.] SOCIAL ENTERTAINMENTS. 305 

poor to sell and give up what they possess at the call of the rich, 
as if it were a hardship that they should not be paid for enjoying, 
themselves, what they rather choose to be paid for surrendering to 
others), "and feed them up with an imaginary good while they 
"monopolize the real benefits of nature." The real truth is that 
Goldsmith had no settled opinions on the subject, which never- 
theless was one of unceasing interest to him, and to which he 
brought a mind at least so far free from prejudice, one way or the 
other, that at this moment it was open to reason and at the next to 
sentiment merely. Doubtless, however, the latter was most strongly 
felt and oftenest indulged. For his merely sentimental views had 
grown out of early impressions, were passionately responded to 
by the warmer sensibilities of his nature, and had received sup- 
posed corroboration from his own experience. He told Sir Joshua 
Reynolds that for four or five years before the Deserted Village 
was published, he had, by sundry country excursions into various 
parts of England, verified his fears of the tendency of overgrowing 
wealth to depopulate the land ; and his remark to a friend who 
called upon him the second morning after he commenced the poem, 
was nearly to the same effect. " Some of my friends differ with 
r me on this plan," he said, after describing the scheme, " and 
" think this depopulation of villages does not exist ; but I am 
" myself satisfied of the fact. I remember it in my own country, 
r and have seen it in this." 

The friend who so called upon him, in May 1768 ; who marks 
the date as exactly two years before the poem appeared ; and who 
tells us that the writing of it, and its elaborate revision, extended 
over that whole, interval of twenty-four months ; was supposed by 
Scott to have been Lee Lewes the actor. It is difficult to under- 
stand how this mistake originated ; but it would seem that 
Sir Walter had j udged from only a small portion of the papers 
whose authorship he thus misstated, and which, except in appar- 
ently imperfect and garbled extracts, have equally escaped all 
Goldsmith's biographers and never been properly made use of 
until now. The poet's acquaintance with the comedian had not 
yet begun, nor in the acknowledged (and extremely dull) Memoirs 
of Lee Lewes, does Goldsmith's name at any time occur. The real 
writer of the anecdotes was Cooke, the young law student already 
so often referred to as Goldsmith's countryman and near neighbour 
in the Temple ; and their curious details have been hitherto 
almost wholly overlooked. They appeared from time to time in 
the European Magazine. 

Cooke prefaces the mention of his calling on " the Doctor" the 
second morning after the Deserted Village was begun, by an account 
of the Doctor's slowness in writing poetry, " not from the tardiness 



306 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

" of fancy, but the time he took in pointing the sentiment, and 
" polishing the versification." An invaluable hint to the poetical 
aspirant, as already I have strongly urged. Indisputable wealth 
of genius, flung about in careless exuberance, has as often failed 
to make a poet, as one finished unsuperfruous masterpiece has 
succeeded, and kept a name in the Collections for ever. Gold- 
smith's manner of writing the Deserted Village, his friend tells us, 
was this : he first sketched a part of his design in prose, in which 
he threw out his ideas as they occurred to him ; he then sat down 
carefully to versify them, correct them, and add such other ideas 
as he thought better fitted to the subject ; and if sometimes he 
would exceed his prose design by writing several verses impromptu, 
these he would take singular pains afterwards to revise, lest they 
should be found unconnected with his main design. Ten lines, 
from the fifth to the fifteenth, had been his second morning's 
work ; and when Cooke entered his chamber, he read them to 
him aloud. 






Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, 

Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, 

How often have I loiter'd o'er thy green, 

Where humble happiness endear' d each scene ! 

How often have I paus'd on every charm, 

The shelter' d cot, the cultivated farm, 

The never-failing brook, the busy mill, 

The decent .church that topp'd the neighbouring hill, 

The hawthorn bush with seats beneath the shade 

For talking age and whispering lovers made. 

"Come," he added, "let me tell you this is no bad morning's 
" work ; and now, my dear boy, if you are not better engaged, I 
"should be glad to enjoy a Shoemaker's holiday with you." 

This proposed enjoyment is then described by Cooke, in a simple, 
characteristic way. ' • A Shoemaker's holiday was a day of great 
" festivity to poor Goldsmith, and was spent in the following 
"innocent manner. Three or four of his intimate friends rendez- 
" voused at his chambers to breakfast about ten o'clock in the 
" morning ; at eleven they proceeded by the City-road and through 
"the fields to Highbury-barn to dinner ; about six o'clock in the 
" evening they adjourned to White Conduit-house to drink tea ; 
"and concluded by supping at the Grecian or Temple-exchange 
"coffee-house, or at the Globe in Fleet-street. There was a very 
"good ordinary of two dishes and pastry, kept at Highbiuy-barn 
" about this time at tenpence per head, including a penny to the 
"waiter; and the company generally consisted of literary charac- 
" ters, a few Templars, and some citizens who had left off trade. 
" The whole expenses of the day's fete never exceeded a crown, 



AP. II.] 



SOCIAL ENTERTAINMENTS. 



307 



w and ofteuer were from three-and-sixpence to four shillings ; for 
" which the party obtained good air and exercise, good living, the 
"example of simple manners, and good conversation." 




Truly, very innocent enjoyment ; and shared not alone by 
Templars and small wits, but by humbler good fellows. One 
Peter Barlow, who acted now and then as a copyist for Goldsmith, 
— very poor, very proud in his way ; who appeared always in 
one peculiar dress ; who declared himself able to give only a 
specified small sum for his daily dinner, but who stood firmly on 
his ability to do this, and never permitted any one to do it for 
him, — had made himself a great favourite with the poet by his 
honest independence and harmless eccentricity, and had generally 
a place in the Shoemaker's holiday. If the dinner cost even five 
shillings each, fifteen-pence was still the limit of Peter's responsi- 
bility ; and the balance was privately paid by Goldsmith. Many, 
too, were his other pensioners, on less liberal terms than Peter. 
He had two or three poor authors always on his list, beside 
"several widows and poor housekeepers;" and when he had no 
money to give the latter, he seldom failed to send them away with 
shirts or old clothes, sometimes with the whole contents of his 
breakfast table : saying with a smile of satisfaction after they were 
gone, "now let me only suppose I have eat a much heartier 
"breakfast than usual, and I'm nothing out of pocket." Those 
who knew him best, exclaims Cooke, after relating some stories of 
this kind, can best speak in his praise. " He was so humane in 
"his disposition, that his last guinea was the general boundary of 
' ' his mun'ficence. " 



308 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

Yet Cooke was no enthusiast. He had rather, at the time these 
anecdotes were written, fallen into the Boswell way of talking of 
his old patron ; and was careful to colour his picture, as though to 
adapt it for popular acceptance, with all due tints of vanity and 
folly. Unable to conceal, indeed, the pains he is at in doing this, 
his examples are often very amusing failures. One day for instance 
he tells us, Goldsmith being in company where many ladies were, 
and a ballad-singer happening to sing his favourite air of Sally 
Salisbury under the window, his envy and vanity broke out, and 
he exclaimed with some passion, " How miserably this woman 
"sings!" "Pray, Doctor," rejoined the lady of the house, 
"could you do it better?" "Yes, madam," was the answer, 
amid a general titter of distrust ; " and the company shall be 
"judges." He instantly began ; when, adds Cooke, with a sort 
of naive renewal of the wonder of the ladies, " singing with some 
"ear and no inconsiderable degree of pathos, he obtained the 
"universal suffrage of the company." I have spoken of the 
harmless forms of mis-called vanity and envy, which unconscious 
comparative criticism will sometimes breed ; and surely this is but 
pleasant evidence of them. Nor did the narrator prove more 
successful when he professed to give instances of Goldsmith's folly. 
The poet of the Pleasures of Memory, interested in all that con- 
cerned the elder poet whose style he made the model for his own 
finished writings, knew Cooke well in the latter days of his life, 
and gives me curious illustration of the habit he then had fallen 
into when he spoke of his celebrated friend. " Sir," he said, on 
Mr. Rogers asking him what Goldsmith really was in conversation, 
"he was a fool. The right word never came to him. If you 
"gave him back a bad shilling, he'd say 'Why it's as good a| 
" ' shilling as ever was born.' You know he ought to have said 
" coined. Coined, sir, never entered his head. He was a fool, sir." 

It may be added, since the question of vanity and envy has 
again arisen here, that even Tom Davies, who talks more of his 
envious sallies than any one, tells us they were altogether childish, 
harmless, and absurd ; that nothing but mirth was ever suggested 
by them ; and that he never formed any scheme, or joined in any 
combination, to hurt any man living. A more important witness, 
too, gives yet more interesting testimony. Bishop Percy, who of 
all his distinguished friends had known him earliest, after stating 
that he was generous in the extreme, — that never was there a 
mind whose general feelings were more benevolent and friendly ; 
and that, so strongly was he affected by compassion, he had 
been known at midnight to abandon his rest, in order to procure 
relief and an asylum for a poor dying object, who was left destitute 
in the streets, — proceeds thus : "He is however supposed to have 



chap, in.] THE EDGEWARE COTTAGE AND ST. STEPHEN'S. 309 

" been often soured by jealousy or envy, and many little instances 
" are mentioned of this tendency in bis cbaracter : but whatever 
"appeared of this kind was a mere momentary sensation, which 
" he knew not how like other men to conceal. It was never the 
"result of principle, or the suggestion of reflection; it never 
"embittered his heart, nor influenced his conduct." Let this 
emphatic language be the comment on any future record of such 
"little instances;" and when Johnson ridicules, hereafter, his 
friend's ignorance of things, let it be taken with Mr. Cooke's odd 
illustration of his supposed ignorance of words. 



CHAPTER III. 

— ♦ — 



THE EDGEWARE COTTAGE, ST. STEPHEN'S, AND GRUB- 
STREET. 1768. 

Henry Goldsmith's death would seem to have been made 
known to his brother Oliver shortly before we discover the 
latter to have gone into temporary retreat in a cottage -J, ,~ 

i eight miles down the Edge ware-road, " at the back of 

1 "Canons." He had taken it in connection with his neighbour in 
the Temple, Mr. Bott ; and they kept it for some little time. It 
was very small, and very absurdly decorated ; and, as a set-off to 

< his Shoemaker's holiday, he used to call this his Shoemaker's 
paradise, one of that craft having built it, and laid it out with 
flying Mercuries, jets d'eau, and other preposterous ornaments, 

1 though the ground it stood upon, with its two rooms on a floor, 
its garden and all, covered considerably less than half-an-acre. 
The friends would occasionally drive down to this retreat, even 
after dining in London, Mr. Bott being one of those respectable 
men who kept a horse and gig : and a curious letter is said to be 
in existence written by Goldsmith shortly before his death, thanking 
him again and again for timely pecuniary help, rendered in his 
worst strait ; saying it is to Bott he entirely owes that he can sit 
down in safety in his chambers without the terrors of arrest hanging 
momentarily over him ; and recalling such whimsical scenes of past 
days as when they used to drive down the Edgeware-road at night, 
and, both their necks being brought to imminent peril by the gig's 
descent into a ditch, the driver (Bott) would exhaust all his profes- 
sional eloquence to prove that at that instant they were exactly in 
the centre of the road. 

Here the History of Rome, undertaken for Davies, was at leisure 



310 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

proceeded with ; here the new poem, worked at in the adjoining 
lanes, and in pleasant strolls along the shady hedges, began to 
grow in importance ; here, thus tuning his exquisite song outside 
the bars of his London prison, he might within himself enjoy that 
sense of liberty for which it so delighted him to listen to the songs 
of other uncaged birds ; and here, so engaged, Goldsmith seems to 
have passed the greater part of the summer, apparently not much 
moved by what was going on elsewhere. Walpole, mourning for 
the loss of his Lady Hervey and his Lady Suffolk, was reading his 
tragedy of the Mysterious Mother to his lady-friends who remained, 
and rejoicing that he did not need to expose himself to "the 
" impertinencies of that jackanapes Garrick, who lets nothing 
" appear but his own wretched stuff, or that of creatures still 
" duller, who suffer him to alter their pieces as he pleases ;" — but; 
Goldsmith's withers are un wrung. Hume was receiving a con- 
siderable increase to his pension, with significant intimation of the 
royal wish that he should apply himself to the continuation of his 
English History ; while great lords were fondly dandling Robertson 
into the good graces of the booksellers, and the Chief Justice was 
admiringly telling the Duke of Bedford that 4500L was to be paid 
him for his History of Charles the Fifth, and Walpole was reason- 
ably sneering at what Scotch puffing and partiality might do ; — 
but the humbler historian at Edgeware pursues his labours 
unbribed and undisturbed. The Sentimental Journey was giving 
pleasure to not a few ; even Walpole was declaring it " infinitely 
"preferable to the tiresome Tristram Shandy;" while, within a 
few months, at a grand dinner-table round which were seated two 
dukes, two earls, Mr. Garrick, and Mr. Hume, a footman in 
attendance was announcing Sterne's lonely death in a common 
lodging-house in Bond-street ; — but Goldsmith does not yet see 
the shadow of his own early decay. Gray, who had in vain 
solicited the Cambridge professorship of modern history while he 
yet had the health it would have given him spirit to enjoy, and 
was now about to receive it from the Duke of Grafton when no 
longer able to hold it, was wondering at a new book about Corsica, 
in which he found a hero pourtrayed by a green goose, and where 
he had the comfort of feeling that what was wise in it must be 
true, for the writer was too great a fool to invent it ; — but Gold- 
smith had never been much interested in Boswell, and Paoli is not 
very likely to increase his interest. Having made this unavailing 
effort to empty his head of Corsica, Boswell himself had visited 
London in the spring, had followed Johnson to Oxford, and was 
now making him the hero of dinner parties at the Crown and 
Anchor in the Strand, where Percy was quite unwarrantably 
attacked, Robertson slighted, and Davies turned into ridicule; — 



chap, in.] THE EDGEWARE COTTAGE AND ST. STEPHEN'S. 311 

but Goldsmith is doubtless well content, for a time, to escape his 
chance of being also "tossed and gored." Kindness he could not 
escape so easily, if Reynolds had it in his gift. For this, too, was 
the year when the great painter, entering the little room where a 
party of his brother artists were in council over a plan for an 
" Academy of Arts," was instantly, all of them rising to a man, 
saluted "president ;" and the year had not closed before the royal 
patronage was obtained for the scheme, and that great institution 
was set on foot which has since so greatly nourished, yet has had 
no worthier or more famous entry on its records than the appoint- 
ment of Samuel Johnson as its first Professor of Ancient Literature, 
and of Oliver Goldsmith as its first Professor of History. 

Whether the clamour of politics, noisiest when emptiest, failed 
meanwhile to make its way into the Shoemaker's paradise, may be 
more doubtful. A year of such profligate turmoil perhaps never 
degraded our English annals. The millennium of rioters as well as 
libellers seemed to have come. The abandoned recklessness of 
public men was seen reacting through all the grades of society ; 
and in the mobs of Stepney-fields and St. George's, were reflected 
the knaves and bullies of White's and St. James's. The election 
for a new Parliament, the old one dying of its seventh year in 
March, let loose every evil element ; and Wilkes found his work 
half done before he threw himself into it. His defeat for London, 
his daring and successful attempt on Middlesex, his imprisonment 
pending the arguments on his outlawry, the result of those argu- 
ments, his election as Alderman, and clumsy alternations of rage 
and fear in his opponents, confirmed him at last the representative 
of Liberty ; and amid tumult, murder, and massacre, the sacred 
cap was put upon his head. Mobs assembled round his prison to 
offer him help, and succeeded so far as to involve Scotch soldiers, 
and their ministerial employers and defenders, in the odium of 
having fired fatally upon unarmed men. The laws seemed to 
have lost their terror, the magistracy their means of enforcing them. 
In one part of London there was a riot of Irish coal-heavers which 
lasted nine hours, and in which eighteen persons were killed, 
before the guards arrived upon the scene. The merchant sailors 
on the river to the number of four thousand rose for an increase 
of wages, and stopped outward-bound ships from sailing till their 
demands were compromised. The Thames watermen, to the best 
of their ability, followed the example ; so did the journeymen 
hatters, with what assistance they could give to the general confu- 
sion ; and even a riot of journeymen tailors threatened to be 
formidable, till Sir John Fielding succeeded in quelling it. Walpole 
has connected these various disturbances with the "favorable 
"Wilkes season," and tells us that in all of them was heard the 



312 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. 'book iv. 

cry of Liberty and its champion. Liberty by itself, to not a few 
of its advocates, bad ceased to convey any meaning. " I take the 
" Wilkes-and-liberty to inform you," wrote a witty merchant to 
his correspondents. It was now that Whitfield put up prayers for 
Wilkes before his sermons ; that Dukes were made to appear in 
front of their houses and drink his health ; that city voters in a 
modest way of trade, refused to give him their votes unless he'd 
take a gift of money as well, in one instance as much as 201. ; and 
that the most notoriously stately and ceremonious of all the 
ambassadors (the Austrian) was tumbled out of his coach, head 
over heels, to have his heels chalked with Number 45. In the 
midst of a Wilkes mob the new parliament met. " Good God," cried 
the Duke of Grafton, when the Duke of Richmond laughed at 
Lord Sandwich's proposition to send and see if the riots had ceased, 
"is it matter for laughter when mobs come to join the name of 
"Wilkes with the sacred sound of liberty !" The poor Duke saw 
none of the causes that had brought this about,, nor dreamt of 
connecting them with the social disorganisation all around him : 
with the seat of government in daily disorder, Ireland insurrec- 
tionary, the colonies on the eve of rebellion, and the continent 
overbearing and arrogant ; while, to himself, a .woman or a horse- 
race was first in the duties of life, and his allies the Bedfords, 
"with each of them his three thousand a-year and his three 
"thousand bottles of claret and champagne," were insensate and 
reckless of disgrace. 

That language of Walpole is not to be adopted to its full extent, 
it may be true, any more than the expressions of the more terrible 
assailant who was now, (with such signatures as Mnemon, Lucius, 
and Atticus), sharpening his nameless weapons for a more fatal 
and enduring aim ; but in neither case is the desperate bitterness 
to be condemned as uncalled-for, simply because it involved 
individual injustice. The time had come, when, even at the 
expense of individual suffering, it was well that such things should 
be thought and said ; and when it was fitting that public men, 
privately not unamiable or dishonest, should at length be made 
bitterly responsible for public wrongs, whether sanctioned or com- 
mitted. Lord Chatham was no worshipper of the mob, but this 
year roused him from his apathy, and replumed his popular fame. 
He saw much of what at last was impending. In "timber- 
" merchants," who began now to contest seats in the large cities 
against the Selwyns and men of the aristocratic families, he saw 
something more than Gilly Williams's "d — d carpenters" who 
(according to Lord Carlisle) should be "kept in their saw-pits." 
A new power was about to make itself felt, and it found Chatham 
prepared. He withdrew his name from the ministry, already 






chap, iil] THE EDGE WARE COTTAGE AND ST. STEPHEN'S. 313 

reeling under the storm of Wilkes ; Shelburne soon after followed 
him ; Camden was not long in following Shelburne ; the poor 
Duke of Newcastle, inapt for new notions, sank into the grave 
with his old ones ; and young Charles James Fox, to whom the 
great friend and associate of his mature life was already intimately 
known, for the first time heard Mr. Burke familiarly talked about 
at his father's table. The latter incident may mark what the 
great families found it now no longer possible to affect ignorance 
of ; though it is just as likely that his purchase of an estate 
induced the talk, as his late fiery speeches in the House of 
Commons. Burke became this year a landed proprietor. With 
money bequeathed him by his father and brother, and with large 
help from Lord Rockingham (at once intended to requite service 
and render it more effective), he purchased an estate in Bucking- 
hamshire called Gregories, or Butlers-court, about a mile from the 
market town of Beaconsfield, and subsequently known by the 
latter name. Assisted as he was, the effort must have straitened 
his means ; for in the following year he asks a loan of a thousand 
pounds from Garrick, which his " dear David," his " dearest 
" Garrick," at once accords. The estate was twenty-four miles 
from London, and within a hundred yards of the house were the 
ruins of what once had been Edmund Waller's home. Gregories 
itself has since become a ruin, consumed by fire ; but nobler 
memories than the old poet's now linger round what once was 
the home of Edmund Burke, and Goldsmith has his share in 
them. 

Exciting news at the Edgeware cottage that Beaconsfield purchase 
at least must have been, though even the noise of Wilkes had 
failed to force an entrance there. In October, Goldsmith was 
again in the Temple, and is to be traced at his old haunts, and in 
the theatres. Somewhat later in the season which now began, 
Garrick brought out a new tragedy by Home ; but so hateful had 
Wilkes again made the Scotch, that its author's name had to be 
suppressed, its own name anglicised, and a young English gentle- 
man brought up from Oxford to the rehearsals, to personate the 
author. Goldsmith discovered the trick, and is said by Davies to 
have proposed a hostile party against the play, not inaptly called 
the Fatal Discovery. "It would hardly be credited that this man 
\ " of benevolence, for such he really was, endeavoured to muster a 
\ "party to condemn it ;" but this, the same authority afterwards 
remarks, " was the transient thought of a giddy man, who upon 
"the least check, would have immediately renounced it, and as 
" heartily joined with a party to support the piece he had before 
"devoted to destruction." It was probably renewed spleen at 
Garrick; whose recent patronage of Kenrick, for no apparent 

P 



314 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

reason than his means of mischief and his continued abuse of more 
successful men, had not tended to induce oblivion of older offences. 
Kenrick's latest form of malice was the epigram ; but the wit was 
less apparent than the venom of connecting Goldsmith's with 
other names just now rife in the playbills. 

What are your Britons, Romans, Grecians, 
Compared with thorough-bred Milesians ? 
Step into Griffin's shop, he'll tell ye, 
Of Goldsmith, Bickerstaff, and Kelly. . . 
And take one Irish, evidence for t'other, 
Ev'n Homer's self is hut their foster-brother. 

The last halting allusion was to a story the humbler wits were now 
telling against Goldsmith. Bickerstaff had invited a party to his 
house to hear one of his dramatic pieces read ; and among the 
company were Goldsmith and one Paul Hiffernan, already men- 
tioned as one of his Grub-street proteges, of the Purdon and 
Pilkington class. He was an eccentric, drunken, idle, Irish 
creature ; educated for a physician, and not without talents and 
even scholarship ; but a continual victim to what he called 
impecuniosity, and so unprovided with self-help against the disease 
that he lived altogether upon the help of other people. Where he 
lived, however, nobody could ever find out : he gave his address 
at the Bedford ; and beyond that, curiosity was baffled, though 
many and most amusing were its attempts to discover more : nor 
was it till after his death that his whereabout was found, in one of 
the wretched little courts out of St. Martin's-lane. He wrote 
newspaper paragraphs in the morning, foraged for his dinner, slept 
out the early part of the night in one of the theatres, and, in 
return for certain critical and convivial displays which made his 
company attractive after play-hours, was always sure of a closing 
entertainment at the Black Lion in Russell-street, or the Cyder 
Cellar in Maiden-lane. Latterly, he had taken altogether to 
dramatic criticism, for which he had some talent, — his earliest 
Irish efforts in that line, when he ought to have been practising 
his profession, were thought mighty pleasant by Burke, then a lad < 
at Dublin College, — and this, with its usual effect upon the Drury- 
lane manager, had recently obtained him a sort of pension from 
Garrick. It was the great actor's worst weakness to involve 
himself thus with the meaner newspaper men ; and it was only 
this very year he was warned, by a letter from Foote, of its danger 
in the case of Hiffernan. " Upon the whole," wTote that master 
in the art of literary libel, for there is nothing like the voice of a 
Gracchus for a good complaint against sedition, "it is, I think, 
" worthy of consideration, whether there is not something immoral, 



chap, in.] THE EDGEWARE COTTAGE AND ST. STEPHEN'S. 315 

" as well as impolitic, in encouraging a fellow, who, without parts, 

| principles, property, or profession, has subsisted for these twenty 

"years by the qualities of a literary footpad." Precisely that 

newspaper jobbery it was, however, to whose success the absence 

of parts, principles, property, and profession is essential, which 

had procured Hiffernan his invitation to the reading of Bickerstaff's 

play. A good dinner preluded the reading, and much justice was 

i done to this, and to the glass which circulated for half an hour 

afterwards, by "Hiff :" but his judgment, and enjoyment, of the 

I play, were much less clearly evinced : and when the first batch of 

I opinions were collected at the end of the first act, " Very well, by 

1 I ' — , very well ! " was all that could be got from him. Alas, for 

what followed ! "About the middle of the second act," says the 

teller of the anecdote, "he began to nod; and in a little time 

"afterwards to snore so loud that the author could scarcely be 

"heard. Bickerstaff felt a little embarrassed; but raising his 

I I voice, went on. Hiffernan's tones, however, increased ; till at 

" last Goldsmith could hold out no longer, but cried out, ' Never 

I " 'mind the brute, Bick ! go on. So he would have served 

" ' Homer if he was here, and reading his own works.'" 

Nothing was easier for Kenrick than to turn this into a com- 
parison of Bickerstaff to Homer ; and no laugh was heartier than 
| Garrick's at the new proof of Goldsmith's folly. But, for his 
countenance of the libeller he was doomed to be severely punished, 
and in connection with this very Bickerstaff. Some four years 
after the present date, that wretched man was driven from society 
i with an infamous stain, and Kenrick grossly connected it by 
allusion with Garrick ; to whom at the very time, as we now 
i know, the miserable culprit was writing from his hiding-place the 
most piteous petitions for charity that one human being ever 
' addressed to another. An action was commenced against the 
libeller, and dropped upon ample apology. ' ' I did not believe him 
I guilty, but did it to plague the fellow," said Kenrick to Thomas 
Evans. The worthy bookseller never spoke to him again. 
■ Scoundrel as he was, it need not be denied that he had some 
cleverness. Johnson hit it off exactly when he described it as a 
faculty that made him public, without making him known. He 
used to lecture at the Devil and other taverns, on every conceivable 
subject from Shakespeare to the perpetual motion, which he thought 
he had discovered ; having been, before he got his Scotch doctor- 
j ship and became Griffiths's hack, a scale or rule-maker. Hence 
! Johnson's quiet answer to the attack on his Shakespeare, that he 
i could not consider himself "bound by his rules;" and similar 
I advice he always gave to Goldsmith, the next most frequent object 
of his attack. Nothing escaped this Ishmael of criticism, not 

p2 



31*6 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

even the Traveller. But "never mind, sir," Johnson would say 
at some new venom, as he said always of the fellow's outrages on 
himself, " a man whose business it is to be talked of, is much 
" helped by being attacked." He explained the reason afterwards 
to Boswell. " Fame, sir, is a shuttlecock : if it be struck only at 
" one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground ; to keep it 
" up, it must be struck at both ends." So too, on Boswell him- 
self remarking, four years after the present, that he thought 
Goldsmith the better for the attacks so frequently made upon him, 
" Yes, sir," was the reply ; " but he does not think so yet. When 
" Goldsmith and I published each of us something at the same 
" time, we were given to understand that we might review each 
" other. Goldsmith was for accepting the offer. I said, no, set 
"reviewers at defiance." Unhappily, his friend never could do 
this; and even the lesson of "retaliation" was learnt too late. 
Kenrick remained, to the last, his evil genius ; and it seems to 
have been with a sort of uneasy desire to propitiate him, that 
Goldsmith yielded to Griffin's solicitation at the close of the present 
year, and consented to take part in the editing of a new Gentleman's 
Journal in which Kenrick was a leading writer, and for which Hiffer- 
nan, Kelly, and some others of doctorial dignity were engaged. It 
died soon after it was born ; and, on some one remarking to him what 
an extraordinary thing so sudden a death was, " Not at all, sir," 
he answered : "a very common case ; it died of too many Doctors. " 
An amusing illustration which belongs nearly to this time, of 
inconvenience sometimes incurred from his Grub-street protege's 
and pensioners, will properly dismiss for the present this worshipful 
company of Kenricks and Hiffernans. The hero of the anecdote 
had all the worst qualities of the tribe ; and "how do you think 
" he served me," said Goldsmith, relating the incident to a friend. 
" Why, sir, after staying away two years, he came one evening 
" into my chambers, half drunk, as I was taking a glass of wine 
' ' with Topham Beauclerc and General Oglethorpe ; and, sitting 
" himself down, with most intolerable assurance inquired after my 
" health and literary pursuits, as if we were upon the most friendly 
" footing. I was at first so much ashamed of ever having known 
" such a fellow, that I stifled my resentment, and drew him into a 
" conversation on such topics as I knew he could talk upon ; in 
"which, to do him justice, he acquitted himself very reputably : 
" when all of a sudden, as if recollecting something, he pulled two 
" papers out of his pocket, which he presented to me with great 
" ceremony, saying, ' Here, my dear friend, is a quarter of a pound 
" ' of tea, and a half pound of sugar, I have brought you ; 
" 'for though it is not in my power at present to pay you the two 
4 ' * guineas you so generously lent me, neither you, nor any man else, 



chap, in.] THE EDGEWARE COTTAGE AND ST. STEPHEN'S. 317 

" ' shall ever have it to say that I want gratitude. This," added 
Goldsmith, " was too much. I could no longer keep in my feelings, 
" but desired him to turn out of my chambers directly, which he 
"very coolly did, taking up his tea and sugar ; and I never saw 
'him afterwards." Certainly Hogarth should have survived to 

\ depict this scene. No less a pencil could have given us the 
fastidious face of Beauclerc, — than whom no man ever showed a 
more uniform and even painful sense of the ridiculous, — when the 
tea and sugar were produced. 

Oglethorpe was a recent acquaintance, and has become, by the 
compliment of Pope, and in the page of Boswell, an historical name. 

[i Now thirty years older than Goldsmith, he survived him upwards 
of eleven years : and to the last preserved, not only that love of 
literature and genius which made him the first active patron of 
Johnson's London while yet the author was quite unknown ; but 

j that " strong benevolence of soul " which connects his memory with 

j the colonisation of Georgia, as well as those Jacobite leanings which 

- involved him in a court-martial after the affair of '45, and sub- 
sequently shelved him as a soldier. He became a member of the 

. House of Commons, sat in several parliaments, compelled a 

- reluctant inquiry into prisons and punishments, and distinguished 
| himself as much by humane as by high tory crotchets. The 
I sympathies which attracted him to Goldsmith, and continued their 

intimacy, appear in the commencement of the only letter that 
survives of their correspondence. " How just, sir," writes Ogle- 
; thorpe, " were your observations, that the poorest objects were by 
1 " extreme poverty deprived of the benefit of hospitals erected for 
J " the relief of the poorest. " And he incloses five pounds for his 
friend to distribute as he may think proper. Nor were they 
without the other point of agreement which had attracted Oglethorpe 
to Johnson. For Goldsmith, though the social bearing of politics 
always interested him most, and he cared little at any time for its 
party questions, had something of a half-fanciful Jacobite leaning, 
dabbled now and then in Jacobite opinions, and was as ready for a 
bit at the Hanoverian-rat as Johnson himself. An anecdote of 
their stroll one day into Westminster Abbey, has preserved for us 
pleasant record of this. They stood together in Poets' Corner ; 
surveyed the dead but sceptred sovereigns that there, from storied 
urn and monumental bust, still rule and glorify the world ; and 
the natural thought probably rose to the minds of both, "perhaps 
f our names, too, will one day be mingled with theirs." Johnson 
broke the silence, and whispered the hope in a Latin verse, 

" Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis." 

They walked away from the Abbey together, and arrived at 



318 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. 



[book IV. 



Teuiple-bar ; where the ghastly remains of the last Jacobite execu- 
tion were still rotting on the spikes above ; and where, till not 




long before, people had made a trade of letting spy-glasses at "a 
"halfpenny a look." Here Goldsmith stopped Johnson, pointed 
up, and slily returned his whisper, 



Forsitan et nostrum . . . miscebitur Istis. 






CHAPTER IV. 



LABOURS AND ENJOYMENTS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE. 1769. 

With the opening of 1769, we find Goldsmith busily engaged 
upon new projects, his Roman History being completed ; 



1769. 
Mi. 41. 



and it was now, Percy tells us, that Johnson took him to 
Oxford, and obtained for him the degree ad eundem of 
M. B. The fact must rest on the bishop's authority ; for the 
present Oxford registrar, though ' ' he mclines to believe that the 
"Bishop of Dromore's impression was correct," finds a chasm in 
the University register which leaves it without positive corrobora- 
tion. They were at this time much together, it is certain ; and if 
Johnson's opinion of the genius of Goldsmith was now at its 
highest, it was repaid with very hearty affection. "Look," said 
Gray, as, in walking this year with a friend through a crowded 
street of the city, he saw a large uncouth figure "rolling" before 
them : " look, look, Bonstetten ! the Great Bear ! There goes 






chap, iv.] LABOURS AND ENJOYMENTS. 319 

" Ursa Major ! " It was Johnson ! " Ah !" said Goldsmith, when 
such expressions were repeated to him, "they may say that! 
" Johnson, to be sure, has a roughness of manner, but no man 
"alive has a more tender heart. He has nothing of the bear but 
"his skin." Their entertainer at Oxford was the accomplished 
lawyer, Chambers, at this time Vinerian Professor, and five years 
later a judge in India ; in whose rooms his more celebrated towns- 
man Scott (both were Newcastle men, and on the old panel of the 
grammar-school to which I went in my boyhood, I remember 
cutting my name underneath theirs) was afterwards introduced to 
Johnson. Chambers had lately been admitted a member of the 
Gerrard-street club. 

His election, with that of Percy, and George Colman, took 
place on the resignation of Hawkins. The records of the early 
years of the club are really so scanty and imperfect, that it is 
difficult to ascertain the simplest fact in connection with it : but 
it appears certain, as I formerly stated, that on the occasion of 
this second ballot for members it was resolved to enlarge the 
original number to twelve ; when, as a result of the resignation of 
Hawkins, and of Beauclerc's forfeiture by continued non-attend- 
ance, four vacancies had to be filled. To the first, Percy was 
elected ; the second was re-claimed by Beauclerc, whose recent 
marriage with Lady Di Spencer, on her divorce from Lord 
Bolingbroke, sufficiently explained his temporary withdrawal ; and 
the third and fourth were filled by Chambers and George Colman. 
It was on the occasion of this slight increase that Goldsmith seems 
to have urged the expediency of a larger infusion of new men. 
"We should change companions oftener," Mrs. Thrale reports him 
to have said with a special reference to Johnson ; "we exhaust one 
"another, and shall soon be both of us worn out. " "It would give 
"the club an agreeable variety," is Boswell's version of his 
remark ; "there could now be nothing new among the members, 
"for they had travelled over each other's minds." This nettled 
Johnson ; being too much in his own way. " Sir," he said, "you 
"have not travelled over my mind, I promise you." Neverthe- 
less, Reynolds agreed with Goldsmith, thinking that life wanted 
colour and diversity as much as his own canvasses did ; and 
immediately before Goldsmith died, the number was increased to 
twenty. But from that time Johnson took little interest in the 
meetings. Almost all the rising men of the day were whigs, cursed 
whigs, bottomless whigs, as he prematurely called Burke ; and the 
spectacle of Charles Fox in the chair, quoting Homer and Fielding 
to the astonishment of Joe Warton, was one he could not get 
reconciled to. Within three years, he was himself the advocate of 
a yet further increase to thirty ; and the form the club then assumed 



320 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

was precisely what lie wished to bring it to : "a mere miscellaneous 
" collection of conspicuous men, without any determinate charac- 
" ter." So, to the present day, it has continued. It may be said 
to have ceased to be the Literary club, as soon as it became necessary 
to call it so ; and, though still stat magni nominis umbra, no 
effort has been made to revive its great, indeed its sole distinction. 

Colman's election seemed a studied slight to Garrick, but his 
claim was not inconsiderable. It was a choice between rival 
managers and rival wits ; eager little figures both ; both social and 
most agreeable men ; and the scale was easily turned. Langton 
describes a club incident soon after Colman's admission. He says that 
Goldsmith, on the occasion of a play brought out by Mrs. Lennox 
(a very ingenious, deserving, and not very fortunate woman, who 
wrote the clever novel of the Female Quixote, and a somewhat 
silly book about Shakespeare, to which Johnson, a great friend of 
hers, was suspected to have contributed), told Johnson at the club 
that a person had advised him to go and hiss it, because she had 
attacked the great poet in her book called Shakespeare Illustrated. 
" And did you not tell him," returned Johnson sharply, "that he 
"was a rascal?" " jSTo, sir," said Goldsmith, "I did not. 
"Perhaps he might not mean what he said." "Nay, sir," was the 
reply, " if he lied, it is a different thing." Colman was sitting 
by, while this passed ; and, dropping his voice out of Johnson's 
hearing, slily remarked to Langton, ' ' Then the proper expression 
"should have been, Sir, if you don't lie, you're a rascal." The 
play was produced at Colman's theatre with the title of the Sister, 
and encountered so strong an opposition that it was never repeated : 
but that the audience was not impartial may be suspected from 
Langton's anecdote, and it is borne out by a reading of the comedy 
itself. Though with too much sentiment, it is both amusing and 
interesting ; and the Strawberry-hill critics who abused it, and 
afterwards pronounced Burgoyne's Heiress "the finest comedy in 
"the English language," might have had the justice to discover 
that three of the characters of the fashionable General were stolen 
from this very Sister of poor Mrs. Lennox. Goldsmith, however, 
had nothing to reproach himself with. He not only refrained 
from joining the dissentients, but assisted the comedy (perhaps 
first disposed to sympathise with it because Garrick had rejected 
it) by an epilogue written in his liveliest strain, and spoken by 
pretty Mrs. Bulkley. 

Goldsmith has had few competitors in that style of writing. His 
prologues and epilogues are the perfection of the vers de societe. 
Formality and ill-humour are exorcised by their cordial wit, which 
transforms the theatre to a drawing-room, and the audience into 
friendly guests. There is a playful touch, an easy, airy elegance, 



chap, iv.] LABOURS AND ENJOYMENTS. 321 

which, when joined to terseness of expression, sets it off with a 
finished beauty and incomparable grace : bnt few of our English 
poets have written this style successfully. The French, who invented 
the name for it, have been almost its only practised cultivators. 
Goldsmith's genius for it will nevertheless bear comparison with even 
theirs. He could be playful without childishness, humorous 
without coarseness, and sharply satirical without a particle of anger. 
Enough remains, for proof, in his collected verse ; but in private 
letters that have perished, many most charming specimens have 
undoubtedly been lost. For with such enchanting facility it flowed 
from him, that with hardly any of his friends in the higher social 
circles which he now began to enter, did it fail to help him to a 
more gracious acceptation, to warmer and more cordial intimacy. It 
takes but the touch of nature to please highest and lowest alike : 
and whether he thanked Lord Clare or the manager of Ranelagh, 
answered an invitation to the charming Miss Hornecks, or supplied 
author or actor with an epilogue, — the same exquisite tact, the same 
natural art, the same finished beauty of humour and refinement, 
recommended themselves to all. 

The Miss Hornecks, girls of nineteen and seventeen, were 
acquaintances formed during this year ; and they soon ripened into 
friends. They were the daughters of Mrs. Horneck, Captain Kane 
Horneck's widow ; whose Devonshire family connected her with 
Reynolds, and so introduced her to Goldsmith. Her only son 
Charles, the " Captain in Lace" as they now fondly called him, 
had entered the Guards in the preceding year, and seems to have been 
as cordial and good-natured, as her daughters were handsome and 
young. The eldest, Catherine, "Little Comedy" as she was called, 
was already engaged to Henry William Bunbury (second son of 
a baronet of old family in Suffolk, whose elder son Charles had 
lately succeeded to the title), who is still remembered as " Geoffrey 
" Gambado," one of the cleverest amateur artists and social 
caricaturists of his day. The youngest, Mary, had no declared 
lover till a year after Goldsmith's death, nor was married till three 
years after that engagement to Colonel Gwyn ; but already she had 
the loving nickname of the " Jessamy Bride," and exerted strange 
fascination over Goldsmith. Heaven knows what impossible dreams 
may at times have visited the awkward unattractive man of letters ! 

And here perhaps it will be right to observe, since the foregoing 
hint, thrown out in my first edition, may have led to the error, 
that its suggestion has been much too freely expanded into an ascer- 
tained fact by a very agreeable writer, Mr. Washington Irving, who 
has proceeded to instal the " Jessamy Bride " in all the honours of 
a complete conquest of Goldsmith, which, as he tells his readers 
(Life of Goldsmith, 370), " has hung a poetical wreath above her 

p3 



322 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

"grave." In Mr. Irving's little book, the " Jessamy Bride " becomes 
the very centre of all Goldsmith's hopes and thoughts in latter life. If 
there is a dance, the Jessamy Bride must of course be his " partner I 
(308) ; if there is an expensive suit of clothes, it is to " win favour 
" in the eyes of the Jessamy Bride " (228) ; if there is an additional' 
extravagance of wardrobe, " the bright eyes of the Jessamy Bride 1 
are made responsible for it (255) ; if he cannot resist an invitation 
of Mr. Bunbury's, it is " especially as the Jessamy Bride would of 
" course be among the guests " (275) ; if " a blue velvet suit " makes 
sudden appearance in Mr. Filby's bills, " again we hold the Jessamy 
" Bride responsible for this splendour of wardrobe " (304) ; if she 
attends a rehearsal of one of his comedies, it is the Jessamy Bride's 
presence that " may have contributed to nutter the anxious heart of 
" the author " (312) ; as death approaches, " the Jessamy Bride has 
"beamed her last smiles upon the poor poet" (360) ; and when 
all is over, a simple request of Mrs. Bunbury and her sister for a 
memorial of their pleasant friend, hereafter to be recorded, is turned 
into "the enthusiasm" of "one mourner" for his memory, " the 
" Jessamy Bride's," which "might have soothed the bitterness of 
" death " (369). This is running down a suggestion indeed ! — and 
with whatever success for romance-loving readers, less pleasantly, it 
must be admitted, for sober seekers after truth. 

But though it is fairly doubtful whether Goldsmith at any time 
aspired, in this direction, to other regard than his genius and sim- 
plicity might claim, at least for these the sisters heartily liked him ; 
and perhaps the happiest hours of the later years of his life were 
passed in their society. Burke, who was their guardian, tenderly 
remembered in his premature old age the delight they had given 
him from their childhood ; their social as well as personal charms 
are uniformly spoken of by all ; and when Hazlitt met the younger 
sister in JSorthcote's painting-room some twenty-five years ago (she 
survived Little Comedy upwards of forty years, and died little more 
than twelve years since), she was still talking of her favourite 
Doctor Goldsmith, with recollection and affection unabated by age. 
Still, too, she was beautiful, beautiful even in years. The Graces 
had triumphed over Time. " I could almost fancy the shade of 
" Goldsmith in the room," says Hazlitt, " looking round with 
" complacency." 

Soon had the acquaintance become a friendship. To a dinner- 
party given this year by their mother's friend and Reynolds's physi- 
cian, Doctor (afterwards Sir George) Baker, the sisters appear at 
the last moment to have taken on themselves to write a joint 
invitation to Goldsmith, to which he replied with some score of 
humorous couplets, at the top of which was scrawled, " This is 
" a poem ! This is a copy of verses ! " 



chap, iv.] LABOURS AND ENJOYMENTS. 323 

Your mandate I got, 

You may all go to pot ; 

Had your senses been right, 

You'd have sent before night ; 

As I hope to be saved, 

I put off being sbaved ; 

For I could not make bold, 

While the matter was cold, 

To meddle in suds, 

Or to put on my duds ; 

So tell Horneck and Nesbitt, 

And Baker and his bit, 

And Kauffman beside, 

And the Jessamy Bride, 

With the rest of the crew, 

The Reynoldses two, 

Little Comedy's face, 

And the Captain in Lace — 

(By the bye you may tell him, 

I have something to sell him ; 

Of use I insist, 

When he comes to enlist. 

Your worships must know 

That a few days ago, 

An order went out, 

For the foot guards so stout 

To wear tails in high taste, 

Twelve inches at least : 

Now I've got him a scale 

To measure each tail, 

To lengthen a short tail, 

And a long one to curtail.) — 
Yet how can I when vext, 

Thus stray from my text ? 

Tell each other to rue 

Your Devonshire crew, 

For sending so late 

To one of my state. 

But 'tis Reynolds's way 

From wisdom to stray, 

And Angelica's whim 

To be frolick like him ; • 
But, alas ! your good worships, how could they be wiser, 
When both have been spoil'd in to-day's Advertiser ? 

Does not this life-like humour re-furnish the hospitable table, 
re-animate the pleasant circle around it, and set us down again 
with Reynolds and his Angelica % The most celebrated of the 
woman painters had found no jealousy in the leading artist of 
England. His was the first portrait that made Angelica Kauffmau 
famous here ; to him she owed her introduction to the Conways 
and Stanhopes ; he befriended her in the misery of her first 
thoughtless marriage, now not many months dissolved, though 
himself (it was said) not unmoved by tenderer thoughts than of 



324 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

friendship ; and he placed her in the list of the members of the 
new Academy. It was little wonder that their names should have 
passed together into print, and become a theme for the poet's 
corner of the Advertiser. 

In the same number of that journal appeared an advertisement 
of the Roman History, which had been first announced in the 
preceding August, and was issued in the May of the present year. 
It was in two octavo volumes of five hundred pages each, was 
described as for the use of schools and colleges, and obtained at 
once a very large sale. What Goldsmith has given as his reason 
for writing it, that other histories of the " period were either too 
" voluminous for common use, or too meanly written to please," 
will suffice also to explain its success. It was a compact and not 
a big book, and it was charmingly written. The critics received it 
well ; and one of them had the grace to regret that " the author of 
"one of the best poems that has appeared since those of Mr. Pope, 
"should not apply wholly to works of imagination." Johnson 
thought, on the other hand, that the writer's time had been occu- 
pied worthily ; and when, a year or two after this, in a dinner 
conversation at Topham Beauclerc's, he was putting Goldsmith in 
the first class not only as poet and comic writer but also as histo- 
rian, and Boswell exploded a protest in behalf of the Scotch 
writers of history, Johnson more decisively roared out his preference 
for his friend over ' ' the verbiage of Robertson and the foppery of 
"Dalrymple." Hume he had never read, because of his infidelity; 
but Robertson, he protested, might have put twice as much into 
his book as he had done, whereas Goldsmith had put into his as 
much as the book would hold. This, he affirmed, was the great 
art : for the man who tells the world shortly what it wants to 
know, will, with his plain, full narrative, please again and again ; 
while the more cumbrous writer, still interposing himself before 
what you wish to know, is crushed with his own weight, and buried 
under his own ornaments. " Goldsmith's abridgement," he added, 
" is better than that of Lucius Floras or Eutropius ; and I will ven- 
' ' rare to say that if you compare him with Vertot, in the same 
" places of the Roman History, you will find that he excels Vertot. 
" Sir, he has the art of compiling, and of saying everything he has 
"to say in a pleasing manner. He is now writing a Natural 
' ' History, and will make it as entertaining as a Persian Tale. " 

For this Natural History the first agreement dates as early as 
the close of February in the present year, five years before it was 
completed and published. It is made between Griffin and Gold- 
smith : and stipulates that the history is to be in eight volumes, 
each containing "from twenty-five to twenty-seven sheets of pica 
" print ;" that for each, a hundred guineas are to be paid on its 






ohap. iv.] LABOURS AND ENJOYMENTS. 325 

delivery in manuscript ; that for this consideration the author is 
to make over all his right and title to, and in, the copy ; that 
f Doctor Goldsmith is to set about the work immediately, and to 
"finish the whole as soon as he conveniently can ;" and that (this 
is put as a rider to the agreement, with fresh signatures) "if the 
" work makes less than eight volumes the Doctor is to be paid in 
"proportion." Soon after the memorandum thus drawn up the 
book was begun, but it was worked at in occasional intervals only : 
for, when the first month's sale of the Roman History had estab- 
lished its success, Davies tempted him with an offer of five hundred 
pounds for a History of England in four volumes, to be " written 
"and compiled in the space of two years" from the date of the 
agreement, but not to be paid for till delivered, and the printer 
had given his opinion that the quantity of matter stipulated for was 
complete ; and the later labour superseded that of the earlier contract. 
But there is no reason to believe that any money was advanced on 
this English History ; and the preservation of the specific agreement 
enables us to test the truth of one of Miss Hawkins's most delicate 
anecdotes. She says that soon after Goldsmith had contracted with 
the booksellers for this particular compilation, for which he was to 
be paid five hundred guineas, he went to Mr. Cadell and told him 
he was in imminent danger of being arrested ; that Cadell imme- 
diately called a meeting of the proprietors, and prevailed on them to 
advance him a considerable part of the sum, which, by the original 
agreement, he was not entitled to till after a twelvemonth from 
the publication of the work ; and that, on a day which Mr. Cadell 
had named for giving the needy author an answer, Goldsmith came 
and received the money, under pretence of instantly satisfying his 
creditors ; whereupon Cadell, to discover the truth of his pretext, 
watched whither he went, and after following him to Hyde-park- 
corner, saw him get into a postchaise, " in which a woman of the 
" town was waiting for him, and with whom, it afterwards appeared, 
"he went to Bath to dissipate what he had thus fraudulently 
"obtained." It has been seen that Cadell had nothing to do with 
the matter ; and it may be presumed that the good-natured lady's 
other facts rest on as slender a foundation. 

On her authority, if it be received at all, must also be received 
another anecdote which is meant for a companion-piece to the 
sketch of dissipation just given. On one of his country excursions 
in that kind of company, the lady tells us, Goldsmith happened to 
stop at an inn on the road, where he found an old portrait hanging 
up in the parlour, which seemed to him so admirably painted, that 
he suspected it at once to be a Vandyke, and resolved to become 
possessed of it if he could. He summoned the mistress of the 
house, asked her if she set any value on that old-fashioned picture, 



326 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

and, finding that she was wholly a stranger to its worth, told her it 
bore really such a great resemblance- to his dear aunt Salisbury 
(picking up on the instant Mrs. Thrale's maiden name), that if she 
would sell it cheap he would buy it. A bargain was struck, a 
price infinitely below the value was paid, Goldsmith carried away 
the picture with him, and, adds the amiable relater of the story 
(who alleges for it, I should remark, the authority of Mr. Langton), 
" had the satisfaction to find that by this scandalous trick he had 
" indeed procured a genuine and very saleable painting of 
" Vandyke's." It is hardly worth while to remark, of the incident 
thus narrated, that, even if its main facts were true (which, if we 
are to believe Northcote's evidence as to Goldsmith's utter ignorance 
of painting, backed by his own in the dedication of the Deserted 
Village, they could hardly have been), it takes its character and 
colour from the animus of the narrator ; and that if the mere 
purchase of a picture at a price greatly below its worth must be 
held to involve a scandalous trick, — for as to the romance about 
his aunt Salisbury, it is not credible for a moment, — a very long 
list indeed of extremely scandalous tricksters might be named, 
from Swift upwards and downwards, on whom much hitherto 
hoarded indignation should straightway be poured. It is to be 
feared, therefore, that the dissipation piece is on the whole to be 
regarded as the more characteristic of the two. 

Indeed it would be idle to deny the charge of dissipation 
altogether. It is clear that with the present year he passed into 
habits of needless expense ; used the influence of a popularity 
which stood never higher than now, to obtain means for their 
thoughtless indulgence ; and involved himself in the responsibilities 
which at last overwhelmed him. He exchanged his simple habits, 
says Cooke, for those of the great ; he commenced quite as a man of 
lettered ease and consequence ; he was obliged to run into debt ; 
" and his debts rendered him at times so melancholy and dejected, 
' ' that I am sure he felt himself a very tmhappy man. " One of 
these sad involvements occurred in the autumn ; when, it is 
supposed, being pressed for some portion of the loan expended on 
his chambers, he exacted from Griffin an advance of five hundred 
guineas for the first five volumes of the Natural History, which the 
bookseller was obliged to make up by disposing of half a share to 
another bookseller (Mr. Nourse), and which Goldsmith had wholly 
expended before half-a-dozen chapters were written. For he had 
laid the subject aside to go on with his English History ; though 
not unwarned of the unpopularity the latter might involve him in, 
so mad was the excitement of the time. Would he be a Hume or 
a Mrs. Macauley 1 He would be neither, he said ; he objected 
equally to both. 



chap, iv.] LABOURS AND ENJOYMENTS. 327 

Against Party it is certain that Goldsmith always set himself. 
"I fly from petty tyrants to the throne." He has, at the same 
time, been careful to tell us that he did this upon principle, 
and not from " empty notions of divine or hereditary right." In 
the preface to his History, where that expression occurs, he takes 
occasion to object to the opinions put forth by Hume respecting 
government as " sometimes reprehensible ; " and to declare, for his 
own part, that when at any time he had felt a leaning towards 
monarchy, it had been suggested by the consideration that a king, 
being but one man, may easily be restrained from doing wrong, 
whereas, if a number of the great are permitted to divide authority, 
who can punish them if they abuse it 1 An error is involved in 
this reasoning (not inexcusable, I hope, by those who have read the 
sketches of party given in this narrative), but at least it suffices to 
show us why, on this theme, Goldsmith joined Johnson against 
Burke, though he differed from Johnson in this, that in real truth 
he went with neither faction. 

Yet surely, if ever even faction, as against itself, could, be 
invested with a something manly and defensible, it was now. The 
most thoughtful, the most retired, the least excitable of men, were 
suddenly aroused to some interest in it. A friend of Gray relates 
that he had an appointment to meet the poet at his lodgings in 
Jermyn-street, and found him so deeply plunged in the columns of 
a newspaper, which with his dinner had been sent him from a 
neighbouring tavern, that his attention was with difficulty drawn 
from it. "Take this," said he, in a tone of excitement; "here 
" is such writing as I never before saw in a newspaper." It was 
the first letter with the signature of Junius. But it was not 
what now we must associate with Junius, — not the reckless 
calumnies and scandals, not the personal spites and hatreds ; not 
such halting liberalism as his approval of the taxation of America, 
and his protest against the disfranchisement of Old Sarum, — which 
then so completely seized upon the reason as well as temper of 
men. It was the startling manifestation of power and courage ; it 
was the sense that unscrupulous ministers had now an enemy as 
unscrupulous ; that here was knowledge of even the worst chicaneries 
of office, which not the most sneering official could make light of ; 
that no minister in either house, no courtier at St. James's, no 
obsequious judge at Westminster, no supercilious secretary in any 
of the offices, could hereafter feel himself safe from treachery and 
betrayal ; and that what hitherto had been only a vulgar half- 
articulate cry from the Brentford hustings, or at best, a faint 
whisper imperfectly echoed from St. Stephen's, was now made the 
property and enjoyment of every section of the people, — of the 
educated by its exquisite polish, of the vulgar by its relish of malice, 



328 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

of the great middle- class by its animated plainness, vigorous 
shrewdness, and dogged perseverance. " I will be heard," cried 
Burke in the House of Commons, in the course of what he wittily- 
called the fifth act of the tragi-comedy acted by his majesty's 
servants for the benefit of Mr. Wilkes, at the expense of the 
constitution : u l ivillhe heard. I will throw open those doors, 
" and tell the people of England that when a man is addressing 
" the chair on their behalf, the attention of the Speaker is engaged " 
— But " great noise " of members talking proved too much for 
even that impetuous spirit ; he was not heard ; nor, till tho 
publication of Sir Henry Cavendish's Notes eleven years since, had 
the English people any detailed means of knowing what had passed 
during the most exciting debates ever known within their House. 
But the gap was filled by Junius. By those celebrated letters, 
reprinted and circulated in every possible shape, the people were 
made parties, in its progress, to much of what was doing in St. 
Stephen's ; in the House itself, the popular element was made of 
greater practical importance ; throughout the country, the demo- 
cratic spirit was strengthened ; and, above all, the right of the 
newspapers to report the debates was at last secured. 



CHAPTER V. 



LONDON LIFE. 1769—1770. 



Horace Walpole, hopeless of his cousin Conway for a Premier, 
had left politics now ; but he could see those increasing 
jn, }: intimations of an uneasy democratic spirit at which I have 
glanced at the close of the last chapter, and he saw them 
with alarm. To meet this year at the same dinner-table the Due 
de Rochefoucault and Mrs. Macauley, whose statue the rector of 
St. Stephen's Walbrook had just set up in the chancel of his 
church, was, to poor Horace, significant of evil. Yet, when he 
went to Paris a month or two later, and could not get into the 
Louvre for the crowds that were flocking to see Madame Dubarry's 
portrait at the Exposition, he did not seem to see evil impending 
there. He could only wonder that the French should adore the 
monarch that was starving them ; and when the Revolution did 
come, was ready to tear his periwig with horror. With all his 
professions for liberty, indeed, he never measured liberty down- 
wards. He never thought of the independence of those below him, 
though half his life was passed in crying out for freedom from 






chap, v.] LONDON LIFE. 329 

those above him. Unhappily also, little things and great things 
too often affected him, or escaped him, in exactly the same pro- 
portion, to the sad misuse of his brilliant talents ; and it was with 
this Gray pleasantly reproached him, when after quiet sarcastic 
enjoyment of the Paris moralities, he blazed up with so much heat 
against poor Garrick's Stratford Jubilee. Why so tolerant of 
Dubarrydom, and so wrathful at Vanity Fair ? 

The great actors at the Jubilee in Shakespeare's honour made a 
three days' wonder of it (the 6th, 7th, and 8th of September), and 
then came back to town. Neither Johnson nor Goldsmith had 
joined them : but among them were Colman, representing his 
theatre in place of poor Powell, who had died suddenly at Bristol 
two months before ; Foote, laughing at everything going forward ; 
several of Garrick's noble friends, dukes, earls, and aristocratic 
beauties ; and last, not least, Mr. Boswell "in a Corsican habit, 
r with pistols in his belt, and a musket at his back, and in the front 
"of his cap, in gold letters, these words, Paoli and Liberty." 
He had written a poem for recitation at the masquerade, to which 
the crowd refused to listen ; but he brought it up to London, 
fired it off in the newspapers, and had the singular satisfaction of 
presenting it to Paoli himself, who arrived in London not many 
days after his admirer, and with a note from whom he had already, 
as we have seen, forced his way, Corsican dress and all, into the pre- 
sence of the great Mr. Pitt. Patriot Paoli's struggle having ended 
in the de^t and absorption of Corsica, he was content to subside 
from a patriot into a civil dangler at St. James's with a pension of a 
thousand a-year ; and probably laughed as heartily as anybody, 
when Boswell now appeared in a full suit of black, with " Corsica" 
exposed in legible letters on his hat, as the dear defunct he was in 
mourning for. Nor did the fit abate for some time. It was not 
till several months later that the old laird of Affleck (so was 
Auchinleck in those days familiarly called) had occasion to make 
his famous complaint to a friend. " There's nae hope for Jamie, 
"mon. Jamie is gaen clean gyte. "What do you think, mon? 
" He's done wi' Paoli ; he's off wi' the landlouping scoundrel of a 
" Corsican ; and whose tail do you think he has pinn'cl himself to 
" now, mon 1 " And here the old judge pauses, to summon up a 
sneer of most sovereign contempt. ' ' A dominie, mon ; an auld 
"dominie : he keeped a schule, and cau'd it an acaadamy." But, 
though not yet exclusively pinned to the auld dominie's tail, 
Jamie so far abated his ostentatious attendance on the landlouping 
Corsican as to revive some of the old nights at the Mitre, and to 
get up some dinners and drinking parties at his rooms in Old 
Bond-street. One of the dinners was fixed for the 16th of 
October : and the party invited were Johnson, Bv,ynolds (now 



330 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

knighted as the President of the Royal Academy), Goldsmith, 
Garriek, Murphy, Bickerstaff, and Tom Davies. 

Some days before it took place, however, an incident occurred 
of no small interest to that circle. One of Johnson's early acquaint- 
ance was Baretti, the Italian, a man of cynical temper and over- 
bearing manners, but also of undoubted ability, who had been 
useful to him at the time of the Dictionary, and whose services 
had never been forgotten. To Goldsmith, on the other hand, this 
man had made himself peculiarly hateful, by all that malice in 
little, which on a larger field he subsequently practised against 
poor Mrs. Piozzi ; and they seem never to have met but to 
quarrel. Their mutual dislike is described by Davies. " He 
" (Goldsmith), least of all mankind, approved Baretti's conver- 
' ' sation ; he considered him as an insolent overbearing foreigner : 
"as Baretti, in his turn, thought him an unpolished man, and an 
" absurd companion." It now unhappily fell out, however, that in a 
street scuffle Baretti drew out a fruit knife which he always carried, 
and killed a man (one of three who had grossly insulted him, 
on his somewhat rudely repulsing the overtures of a woman with 
whom they were proved to be connected) ; and it further happened 
that Goldsmith was among the first to hear of the incident next 
morning, when Baretti was under examination before Sir John 
Fielding. The good-natured man forgot all his wrongs in an 
instant, thought only of his enemy's evil plight, and hurried off to 
render him assistance. " When this unhappy Italian," says Davies, 
" was charged with murder and sent by Sir John Fielding to 
" Newgate, Goldsmith opened his purse, and would have given 
' ' him every shilling it contained : he at the same time insisted 
" upon going in the coach with him to the place of his confine- 
1 1 ment. " Bail was given before Lord Mansfield a few days later ; 
and never were such names, before or since, proffered in connection 
with such a charge. They were Reynolds, Fitzherbert, Burke, 
and Garriek. All the friends met to arrange the defence ; and it 
was at one of the consultations, on a hot dispute arising between 
Burke and Johnson, that the latter is reported to have frankly 
admitted afterwards, " Burke and I should have been of one 
"opinion if we had had no audience." Baretti was acquitted, 
though not without merited rebuke ; and Johnson subsequently 
obtainedfor him the post of tutor in the family of the Thrales 
( which Mrs. Thrale lived to have reason bitterly to repent), 
and Reynolds that of honorary foreign secretary to the new , 
Academy. 

But Mr. Boswell's dinner is waiting us. On that very day (as 
Mr. William Filby's bills enable us with commendable correctness 
to state), Goldsmith's tailor took him home " a half-dress suit of 



CHAP. V.] 



LONDON LIFE. 



331 



"ratteen lined with satin, a pair of silk stocking breeches, and a 
"pair of bloom-coloured ditto" (for which the entire charge was 
about sixteen pounds) ; and to Old Bond-street the poet would 
seem to have proceeded in "silk attire." Though he is said to 
have been last at every dinner party, arriving always, according 
to Sir George Beaumont, in a violent bustle just as the rest were 
siting down, — when he arrived on this occasion, there was still a 
laggard : but Garrick and Johnson were come, and Boswell pleasantly 




relates with what good humour they had met ; how Garrick played 
round Johnson with a fond vivacity, taking hold of the breasts of 
his coat, and, as he looked up in his face with a lively archness, 
complimenting him on the good health which he seemed then to 
enjoy, while the sage, shaking his head, beheld him with a gentle 
complacency. Dinner continued to be kept waiting, however, 
Reynolds not yet arriving ; and, says Boswell, " Goldsmith, to 
' ' divert the tedious minutes, strutted about bragging of his dress, 
"and I believe was seriously vain of it, for his mind was wonder- 
11 fully prone to such impressions." Of course Boswell had no 
such weakness, any more than Horace Walpole, also a great 
laugher on the same score. Though the one had so lately figured 
in Corsican costume, and was so proud of his ordinary dress that 
he would show off, to the smallest of printers' devils, his new ruffles 
and sword, — though the other had just received a party of French 
visitors at Strawberry-hill in elaborate state, presenting himself at 



332 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

the gate in a " cravat of Gibbons's carving " and a pair of James- 
the-First gloves embroidered up to the elbows, — both thought 
themselves entitled to make the most of poor Goldsmith's ' ' brag- 
" ging ; " and Garrick, however good the humour he might be in, had 
always his laugh in equal readiness. " Come, come," he said, 
" talk no more of that. You are perhaps the worst . . . eh, eh ! I 
Goldsmith eagerly attempted to interrupt him. " Nay," continued 
Garrick, laughing ironically, "nay, you will always look like a 
"gentleman ; but I am talking of being well or ill drest." " Well,! 
answered Goldsmith, with an amusing simplicity which makes the 
anecdote very pleasant to us, " let me tell you, when my tailor 
" brought home my bloom-coloured coat, he said, ' Sir, I have a 
" 'favour to beg of you. When anybody asks you who made 
" ' your clothes, be pleased to mention John Filby, at the Harrow 
" 'in Water-lane.' " " Why, sir," remarked Johnson, " that was 
"because he knew the strange colour would attract crowds to gaze 
' ' at it, and thus they might hear of him, and see how well he could 
"make a coat, even of so absurd a colour." Crowds have been 
attracted to gaze at it, and Mr. Filby's bloom-coloured coat defies 
the ravages of time ! 

How the party talked after dinner may be read in Boswell ; in 
all whose reports, hoAvever, the confessed object is to give merely 
the talk of one speaker, with only such limited fragments of 
remark from others as may be necessary in elucidation of the one. 
Thus, there are but two sentences preserved of Goldsmith's ; both 
sensible enough, though both of them, indicating that he was not 
disposed to accept all Johnson's criticism for gospel. He put in a 
word for Pope's character of Addison, as "showing a deep 
" knowledge of the human heart," while Johnson was declaring 
(quite justly) that in Dry den's poetry were passages drawn from a 
profundity which Pope could never reach ; and he quietly inter- 
posed, when Johnson took to praising Lord Karnes's Elements of 
Criticism, that it must have been easier to write that book "than it 
" was to read it." Yet a very interesting dinner to have been pre- 
sent at, one feels on the whole this must have been. Goldsmith's 
new coat one would like to have seen, with the first freshness of 
its bloom upon it. Something it must have been to hear Johnson 
repeat, " in his forcible melodious manner," those famous closing 
lines of the Dunciad which Pope himself could not repeat 
without a voice that faltered with emotion. Nor could 
the eager encounter of Garrick with Johnson on the respective 
merits of Shakespeare and Congreve fail to have had its entertain- 
ment for us ; and, beyond and before all, who would not have 
laughed to see the very giver as well as describer of the feast 
plucking up courage to "venture" a remark at it, and bluntly 



chap, v.] LONDON LIFE. 333 

called a dunce for his pains ! Poor Boswell appears to have been 
the only one who came off ill at this dinner, as he did at several 
other meetings before he returned to Scotland, — being compared to 
Pope's dunces, having his head called his peccant part, and receiving 
other as unequivocal compliments, — so that he was fain to console 
himself 'with what he now heard Goldsmith, happily adapting an 
expression in one of Gibber's comedies, say of his hero's conversa- 
tion. "There is no arguing with Johnson ; for when his pistol 
"misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt-end of it." 

The nature of Goldsmith's employments at the close of 1769, 
are indicated in the advertising columns of the papers of the day. 
His English History occupied him chiefly, his History of Animated 
Nature occasionally ; he had undertaken to write a life of his 
countryman, Parnell, for a new edition of his poems, — this being 
a subject in which, as he remarks in the biography itself, what he 
remembered having collected in boyhood ' ' from my father and 
" uncle, who knew him," had doubtless given him a personal 
interest ; and the speedy publication of the Deserted Village was 
twice announced in the Public Advertiser. But it was not 
published speedily. Still it was paused over, altered, polished, 
and refined. Bishop Percy has mentioned the delightful facility 
with which his prose flowed forth unblotted with erasure, as a 
contrast to the labour and pains of his verse interlined with 
countless alterations ; but in prose, as in poetry, he aimed at the 
like effects, and obtained them. He knew that no picture will 
stand, if the colours are bad, ill-chosen, or indiscreetly combined ; 
and that not chaos, but order, is creation. It is a pity that men, 
though of perhaps greater genius, who have lived since his time, 
should not more carefully have pondered such lessons as his 
writings bequeath to us. It is a pity that the disposition to rush 
into print should be so general ; for few men have ever repented 
of publishing too late. Goldsmith, alas ! never found himself 
without the excuse which the successful poet, supreme in his 
power and mastery over the town, threw out for the instant needs 
and pressing necessities of less fortunate men. 

" Keep your piece nine years." 
"Nine years !" cries he, who, high in Drury-lane, 
Lull'd by soft zephyrs through the broken pane, 
Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before Term ends, 
Obliged by hunger and request of friends. 

Yet neither at the request of friends, nor at the more urgent call 
of hunger, did Goldsmith peril his chances of being cherished as a 
poet by future generations, Pope's own method of sending forth 
a part of a poem one winter, and promising its completion for the 



334 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book it. 

winter following, would be laughed at now-a-days : yet extremely 
few are the thoughts " conceived with rapture and with fire 
"begot," compared with those that may be carefully brought 
forth, becomingly and charmingly habited, and introduced by the 
Graces. Men of the more brilliant order of fancy and imagination 
should be always distrustful of their powers. Spar and stalactite 
are bad materials for the foundation of solid edifices. 

The year 1770 opens with a glimpse into the old fireside at 

Kilmore. The Lawders do not seem to have communica- 
TPt 4.9 ted with him since his. uncle Contarine's death; and a 

legacy of lbl. left him by that generous friend, remained 
unappropriated in their hands. His brother Maurice, still without 
calling or employment, and apparently living on such of his 
relatives as from time to time were willing to afford him a home, 
probably heard this legacy mentioned while he made one of his 
self-supporting visits, for he straightway wrote to Oliver. The 
money would help him to an outfit, if his famous brother could 
help him to an appointment ; and to express his earnest hopes in 
this direction, was the drift of the letter. His sister Johnson 
wrote soon after, for her husband, in a precisely similar strain ; 
and to these letters Goldsmith's reply has been kept. It shows 
little change since earlier days. His Irish friends and family are 
as they then were. They do not seem to have answered many 
recent communications sent to them ; he now learns for the first 
time that Charles is no longer in Ireland ; his brother-in-law, 
Hodson, has been as silent as the rest ; his sister Hodson he never 
mentions, some early disagreement remaining still unsettled ; and 
he sends cousin Jenny his portrait, in memory of an original 
"almost forgot. " The latter is directed to "Mr. Maurice 
" Goldsmith, at James Lawder's, Esq. at Kilmore, near Carrick-on- 
" Shannon," and bears the date of " January, 1770." 

"Dear Brother, I should have answered your letter sooner, but in truth 
I am not fond of thinking of the necessities of those I love, when it is so 
very little in my power to help them. I am sorry to find you are still 
every way unprovided for ; and what adds to my .uneasiness is, that I have 
received a letter from my sister Johnson, by which I learn that she is pretty 
much in the same circumstances. As to myself, I believe I could get both 
you and my poor brother-in-law something like that which you desire, but I 
am determined never to ask for little things, nor exhaust any little interest I 
may have until I can serve you, him, and myself more effectually. As yet no 
opportunity has offered, but I believe you are pretty well convinced, that I will 
not be remiss when it arrives. The king has lately been pleased to make me 
Professor of Ancient History in a royal Academy of Painting, which he has 
just established, but there is no salary annexed ; and I took it rather as a 
compliment to the institution than any benefit to myself. Honours to one in 
my situation are something like ruffies to a man that wants a shirt. You tell 
me that there are fourteen or fifteen pounds left me in the hands of my cousin 



chap, v.] LONDON LIFE. 335 

Lawder, and you ask me what I would have done with them. My dear 
brother, I would by no means give any directions to my dear worthy relations 
at Kilmore, how to dispose of money, which is, properly speaking, more theirs 
than mine. All that I can say is, that I entirely, and this letter will serve 
to witness, give up any right and title to it ; and I am sure they will dispose 
of it to the best advantage. To them I entirely leave it, whether they or you 
may think the whole necessary to fit you out, or whether our poor sister 
Johnson may not want the half, I leave entirely to their and your discretion. 
I The kindness of that good couple to our poor shattered family, demands our 
' sincerest gratitude, and though they have almost forgot me, yet, if good things 
at last arrive, I hope one day to return, and encrease their good humour by. 
adding to my own. I have sent my cousiD Jenny a miniature picture of 
! myself, as I believe it is the most acceptable present I can offer. I have 
i ordered it to be left for her at George Faulkener's, folded in a letter. The 
face, you well know, is ugly enough, but it is finely painted. I will shortly 
also send my friends over the Shannon some mezzotinto prints of myself, and 
some more of my friends here, such as Burke, Johnson, Reynolds, and Colman. 
I believe I have written an hundred letters to different friends in your country, 
and never received an answer from any of them. I do not know how to 
account for this, or why they are unwilling to keep up for me those regards, 
which I must ever retain for them. If then you have a mind to oblige me, 
you will write often whether I answer you or not. Let me particularly have 
the news of our family and old acquaintances. For instance, you may begin 
by telling me about the family where you reside, how they spend their time, 
and whether they ever make mention of me. Tell me about my mother, my 
brother Hodson, and his son ; my brother Harry's son and daughter, my sister 
Johnson, the family of Bally oughter, what is become of them, where they live, 
and how they do. You talked of being my only brother, I don't understand 
you — Where is Charles ? A sheet of paper occasionally filled with news of 
this kind, would make me very happy, and would keep you nearer my mind. 
As it is, my dear brother, believe me to be yours, most affectionately, Oliver 
Goldsmith. " 

The writer's weakness is here, too, as of old. He believes he 
could get, for his poor, idle, thriftless petitioners, exactly what 
they want ; though ruffles, minus the shirt, are the sum of his own 
acquisitions. But he will wait ; and they must wait ; and good 
things are sure to arrive ; and they will one day be all in good 
humour again. The old, hopeful, sanguine, unreflecting story ! 
Nevertheless, Maurice soon tired of waiting, as his wealthier rela- 
tives tired of helping him to wait ; and he is shortly afterwards 
discovered again complaining to his brother, that really he finds it 
difficult to live like a gentleman. Oliver replies upon this in 
somewhat plainer fashion, recommending him by all means to 
quit the unprofitable calling, and betake himself to some handicraft 
employment, if no better can be found : whereupon Maurice bound 
himself to a cabinet-maker in Drumsna, in the county of Leitrim, 
in which calling, several years after his brother's death, he kept a 
shop in Dublin. Meanwhile Oliver's inquiry after brother-in-law 
Hodson' s son, had the effect, soon after his letter reached Athlone, 
of bringing back to London a very unsettled, and somewhat 



336 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

eccentric youth : who had formerly visited Goldsmith, after 
abruptly quitting Dublin University, leaving at that time obscure 
traces of the extent to which his celebrated relative had befriended 
him ; and who now, having chiefly occupied the interval in foreign 
travel, during which he had turned to account certain half-finished 
medical studies, lived for the most part in London, until his uncle 
Oliver's death, as a pensioner on his scanty resources. He resem- 
bled Oliver in some thoughtless peculiarities of character, and in 
his odd vicissitudes of good and evil fortune, for he once paid a 
small debt with an undrawn lottery ticket which turned out a 
prize of 20,000?. During his residence in London, he practised 
occasionally, without any regular qualification, as an apothecary in 
Newman-street, but he ultimately ended his days as a prosperous 
Irish gentleman, farming a patrimonial estate. When Goldsmith 
died, half the unpaid bill he owed to Mr. William Filby, and 
which amounted in all to only 791. , was for clothes supplied to this 
nephew Hodson. Yet it does not appear that the bill was paid by 
this very genuine young branch of the old careless, idle, improvi- 
dent Goldsmith stock. 






CHAPTER VI. 



DINNERS AND TALK. 1770. 

In Goldsmith's letter to his brother Maurice, it will have been 
observed that the writer's friends over the Shannon were 
m+. 4.9 ^°ld- snor fcly to expect some mezzotinto prints of himself, 
and of such friends of his as Burke, Johnson, Reynolds, 
and Colman. The fact thus indicated has its proper biographical 
significance. The head of the author of the Traveller now figured 
in the print-shops. Reynolds had painted his portrait. ' ' In 
"poetry we may be said to have nothing new," says a letter- writer 
of the day ; " but we have the mezzotinto print of the new poet, 
" Doctor Goldsmith, in the print-shop windows. It is in profile 
"from a painting of Reynolds, and resembles him greatly." The 
engraving was an admirable one, having been executed, under the 
eye of the great painter himself, by Guiseppe Marchi, his first 
pupil. The original, which Reynolds intended for himself, passed 
into the possession of the Duke of Dorset, and remains still at 
Knowle ; but a copy also painted by Reynolds, and the only other 
portrait of Goldsmith known to have been touched by his pencil, 
was taken afterwards for Thrale, and ultimately placed in the 



chap, vr.] DINNERS AND TALK. 337 

dining-room at Streatham, by the side of Johnson, Burke, Garrick, 
and others of his famous friends. The life of his celebrity is 
thus, as it were, beginning ; and from no kinder, no worthier hand 
than that of Reynolds, could it receive inauguration. The great 
painter's restless and fidgetty sister, — who used herself to paint 
portraits, with such exact imitation of her brother's defects and 
avoidance of his beauties, that, according to Northcote, they made 

j himself cry and everybody else laugh, — thought it marvellous that 
so much dignity could have been given to the poet's face, and yet 
so strong a likeness be conveyed : for "Dr. Goldsmith's cast of 
"countenance," she proceeds to inform us, "and indeed his whole 
' ' figure from head to foot, impressed, every one at first sight with 
" an idea of his being a low mechanic ; particularly, I believe, a 
"journeyman tailor:" and in proof the lively lady relates that 
Goldsmith came in one day, at a party at her brother's, very indig- 
nant at an insult he had received from some one in a coffee-house ; 
and, on explaining it as "the fellow took me for a tailor," all 
the party present either laughed aloud, or showed they suppressed 
a laugh. It is a pity they were not more polite, if only for 
their host's sake ; since it is certain that these jibes were never 
countenanced by Reynolds. He knew Goldsmith better ; and as 
he knew, he had painted him. A great artist does not measure a 
face, tailor-fashion ; it is by seizing and showing the higher aspects 
of character, that he puts upon his work the stamp of history. No 
man had seen earlier than Reynolds into Goldsmith's better quali- 
ties ; no man so loved and honoured him to the last ; and no man 
so steadily protected him, with calm, equable, kindly temper, 
against Johnson's careless sallies. "It is amazing," said the 
iatter more than once, with that too emphatic habit of over- 
charging the characteristics of his friends which all agreed in 
attributing to him, "it is amazing how little Goldsmith knows, he 
"seldom comes where he is not more ignorant that any one else ;" 
and on Reynolds quietly interposing ' ' yet there is no man whose 
"company is more liked," the other, fully conceding this, would 

! explain it by the gratification people felt, to find a man of ' ' the 
"most distinguished abilities as a writer" inferior in other respects 
to themselves. Rut Reynolds had another explanation. He 
thought that much of Goldsmith's nonsense, as the nonsense of a 
man of undoubted wit and understanding, had the essence of 
conviviality in it. He fancied it not seldom put on for that 

I reason, and for no other. " One should take care," says Addison, 
" not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter ;" 
and some such maxim, Reynolds seems to have thought, was put 
in practice by Goldsmith. It was not a little, at any rate, to 
have given that impression to so wise as well as kind an observer : 

Q 



338 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book it. 

to one of whom Johnson said to Boswell that he had known no 
one who had passed through life with more observation ; and the 
confidence between the friends, which was probably thus estab- 
lished, remained unbroken to the end. I can only discover one 
disagreement that ever came between them ; and the famous dinner 
parties in Leicester-square were now seldom unenlivened by the 
good humour and gaiety of Goldsmith. 

Nor is it improbable that, occasionally, those festive meetings were 
a little in need of both. " Well, Sir Joshua," said lawyer Dunning 
on arriving first at one of them, " and who have you got to 
" dine with you to-day 1 The last time I dined in your house, the 
" company was of such a sort, that by — I believe all the rest 
" of the world enjoyed peace for that afternoon." But though 
vehemence and disputation will at times usurp quieter enjoyments J 
where men of genius and strong character are assembled, the evil 
dence that has survived of these celebrated dinners in no respecf 
impairs their indestructible interest. They were the first great 
example that had been given in this country, of a cordial inter- 
course between persons of distinguished pretensions of all kinds, 
poets, physicians, lawyers, deans, historians, actors, temporal and 
spiritual peers, house of commons men, men of science, men of 
letters, painters, philosophers, musicians, and lovers of the arts, — 
meeting on a ground of hearty ease, good humour, and pleasantry, 
which exalts my respect for the memory of Reynolds. It was no 
prim fine table he set them down to. There was little order or 
arrangement ; there was more abundance than elegance ; and a 
happy freedom thrust conventionalism aside. Often was the dinne- 
board, prepared for seven or eight, required to accommodate itself 
to fifteen or sixteen ; for often, on the very eve of dinner, would 
Sir Joshua tempt afternoon visitors with intimation that Johnson, 
or Garrick, or Goldsmith was to dine there. Nor was the want 
of seats the only difficulty. A want of knives and forks, of plates 
and glasses, as often succeeded. In something of the same style, 
too, was the attendance ; the ' ' two or three occasional domestics I 
were undisciplined ; the kitchen had to keep pace with the visitors ; 
and it was easy to know the guests best acquainted with the house, 
by their never failing to call instantly for beer, bread, or wine, 
that they might get them before the first course was over, and the 
worst confusion began. Once Sir Joshua was prevailed upon 
furnish his table more amply with dinner glasses and decante 
and some saving of time they effected ; yet, as these " accelerati 
" utensils" were demolished in the course of service, he coi 
never be persuaded to replace them. " But such trifling emb 
" rassments," added Mr. Courtenay, describing them to Sir Jan 
Mackintosh, ' ' only served to enhance the hilarity and singu 






chap, vi.] DINNERS AND TALK. 339 

\ ' pleasure of the entertainment. " It was not the wine, dishes, 
and cookery, it was not the fish and venison, that were talked of 
or recommended ; those social hours, that irregular convivial talk, 
had matter of higher relish, and fare more eagerly enjoyed. And 
amid all the animated bustle of his guests, the host sat perfectly 
composed ; always attentive to what was said, never minding 
what was eat or drank, and leaving every one at perfect liberty to 
scramble for himself. Though so severe a deafness had resulted 
from cold caught on the continent in early life, as to compel the 
use of a trumpet, Reynolds profited by its use to hear or not to 
hear, or as he pleased to enjoy the privileges of both, and keep his 
own equanimity undisturbed. " He is the same all the year 
" round," exclaimed Johnson, with honest envy. " In illness and 
f in pain, he is still the same. Sir, he is the most invulnerable man 
" I know ; the man with whom, if you should quarrel, you will 
" find the most" difficulty how to abuse." Nor was this praise 
obtained by preference of any, but by cordial respect to all ; for 
in Reynolds there was as little of the sycophant as of the tyrant. 
However high the rank of the guests invited, he waited for none. 
His dinners were served always precisely at five o'clock. His was 
not the fashionable ill breeding, says Mr. Courtenay, " which 
V could wait an hour for two or three persons of title," and put the 
rest of the company out of humour by the invidious distinction. 

Such were the memorable meetings, less frequent at first than 
they afterwards became, from which Goldsmith was now rarely 
absent. Here appeared the dish of peas one day that were any- 
thing but their natural colour, and which one of Beauclerc's waggish 
friends recommended should be sent to Hammersmith, because 
" that was the way to Turnham Green [turn 'em green]." It was 
said in a whisper to Goldsmith ; and so tickled and delighted him 
that he resolved to pass it off for his own at the house of Burke, 
who had a mighty relish for a bad pun. But when the time came 
for repeating it, he had unluckily forgotten the point, and fell into 
| hapless confusion. " That is the way to make 'em green," he 
said : but no one laughed. "I mean that is the road to turn 'em 
| green : " he blundered out : but still no one laughed ; and as 
Beauclerc tells the story, he started up disconcerted, and abruptly 
quitted the table. A tavern he would often quit, Hawkins tells 
us, if his jokes were unsuccessful ; though at the same time he 
would generally preface them, as with an instinctive distrust of 
their effect, "now I'll tell you a story of myself, which some 
"people laugh at and some do not." The worthy knight adds a 
story something like Beauclerc's, which he says occurred at the 
breaking up of one of those tavern evenings, when he entreated the 
company to sit down, and told them if they would call for another 

Q2 



340 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

bottle, they should hear one of his bon-niots. It turned out to be 
what he had said on hearing of old Sheridan's habit of practising 
his stage gestures in a room hung round with ten looking-glasses, 
' ' then there were ten ugly fellows together ; " whereupon, every 
body remaining silent, he asked why they did not laugh, " which 
" they not doing, he without tasting the wine left the room in 
" anger." 

But surely all this, even if correctly reported, was less the sensitive- 
ness of ill-nature than the sudden shame of exaggerated self-dis- 
trust. Poor Goldsmith ! He could never acquire what it is every one's 
duty to learn, the making light of petty annoyances. " Consider, 
11 Sir, how insignificant this will appear a twelvemonth hence," wan 
on such occasions, the precious saying of Johnson, who, if he often 
inflicted the vexation, was commonly the first to suggest its remedy. 
But Goldsmith never lost his over sensitive nature. His very sus- 
picions involved him in unreserved disclosures which revealed the 
unspoiled simplicity of his heart. Alas ! that the subtle insight 
which is so able to teach others, should so often be powerless to 
guide itself ! Could Goldsmith only have been as indifferent as he 
was earnest, as impudent as he was frank, he might have covered 
effectually every imperfection in his character. Could he but have 
practised in his person any part of the exquisite address he pos- 
sessed with his pen, not an objection would have been heard 
against him ; but when the pen was put down, the enchanter was 
without his wand, and an ordinary mortal like the rest of us. 
Rochester said of Shadwell, that if he had burnt all he wrote, and 
printed all he spoke, he would have left behind him more wit and 
humour than any other poet. It is the reverse of this we have to say 
of Goldsmith ; yet measuring him by Shadwell, we may surely rest 
perfectly satisfied with the relative accomplishments and deficiencies 
of each. That consciousness of self which so often gives the charm 
and the truth to his creations, was the very thing over which he 
stumbled when he left the fanciful and walked into the real world. 
All then became patent, and a prey to critics the reverse of 
generous. He wore his heart upon his sleeve. " Sir, rather than 
" not speak, he will talk of what he knows himself to be ignorant, 
"which can only end in exposing him." He could not conceal 
what was uppermost in his mind, says Davies ; he blurted it out, 
says Johnson, to see what became of it. Thus, when Hawkins 
tells us that he heard him say in company, "yesterday I heard an 
" excellent story, and would relate it now if I thought any of you 
" able to understand it," the idea conveyed is not an impertinence, 
but simply that the company, including Hawkins, ivas a very 
stupid one. Yet, if we would have politeness perfectly defined, 
we have but to turn to the writings of the man who thus imper- 



chap, vi.] DINNERS AND TALK. 341 

fectly practised it. Never was the distinction better put than 
where he tells us why ceremony should be different in every 
country while true politeness is everywhere the same, because the 
former is but the artificial help which ignorance assumes to imitate 
the latter, which is the result of good sense and good nature. 
Unhappily it was the best part of his own nature which he too 
often laid aside, when he left the society of himself for that of his 
friends. " Good heavens, Mr. Foote," exclaimed a lively actress 
at the Haymarket, " what a humdrum kind of man Dr. Goldsmith 
"appears to be in our green-room, compared with the figure he 
"makes in his poetry?" "The reason of that, madam," replied 
the manager, " is, because the Muses are better companions than 
"the Players." Thinking his companions more stupid thin his 
thoughts, it certainly was not his business to say so ; yet he could 
not help awkwardly saying it. His mind relieved itself, as a 
necessity, of all that lay upon it. His kindly purposes, and simple 
desires ; his sympathies to assist others, and his devices to make 
better appearance for himself ; his innocent distrusts, and amusing 
vanities ; the sense of his own undeserved disadvantages, and vex- 
ation at others' as undeserved success, — everything sprang to his 
lips, and it was only from himself he could conceal anything. 

Even Burke could not spare that weakness, nor refrain from 
practising upon it, not very justifiably, for the amusement of his 
friends. He and an Irish acquaintance (who lived to be Colonel 
O'Moore, to tell the anecdote to Mr. Croker, and perhaps to colour 
it a little) were walking to dine one day with Reynolds, when, on 
arriving in Leicester-square, they saw Goldsmith, also on his way 
to the same dinner party, standing near a crowd of people who 
were staring and shouting at some foreign women in the windows 
of one of the hotels. " Observe Goldsmith," said Burke to 
O'Moore, " and mark what passes between him and me by-and-bye 
" at Sir Joshua's." They passed on, and were soon joined at 
Reynolds's by Goldsmith, whom Burke affected to receive very 
coolly. " This seemed to vex poor Goldsmith," says the teller of 
the story ; and he begged Mr. Burke would tell him how he had. 
had the misfortune to offend him. Burke appeared very reluctant 
to speak ; but, after a good deal of pressing, said that " he was 
" really ashamed to keep up an intimacy with one who could be 
"guilty of such monstrous indiscretions as Goldsmith had just 
" exhibited in the square." With great earnestness Goldsmith 
protested himself unconscious of what was meant. " Why," said 
Burke, " did you not exclaim, as you were looking up at those 
" women, what stupid beasts the crowd must be for staring with 
" such admiration at those painted Jezebels, while a man of your 
" talents passed by unnoticed ? " "Surely, surely, my dear friend," 



342 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

exclaimed Goldsmith, horror-struck, "I did not say so ?" "Xay," 
returned Burke, " if you had not said so, how should I have known 
"it?" " That's true," answered Goldsmith, with great humility : 
" I am very sorry ; it was very foolish. I do recollect that something 
" of the hind passed through my mind, but I did not think I had 
" uttered it." The anecdote is more creditable to Goldsmith, not- 
withstanding the weakness in his character it unquestionably 
reveals, than to Burke, to whose disadvantage it was probably 
afterwards remembered. It should be added that Burke had a turn 
for ridicule of that kind ; and got up a more good-humoured trick 
against Goldsmith at his own house, not long after this, in which a 
lively kinswoman was played off as a raw Irish authoress, arrived 
expressly to see " the great Goldsmith," to praise him, and get his 
subscription to her poems, which, with liberal return of the praise 
(for several she had read out aloud), the simple poet gave, abusing 
them heartily the instant she was gone. Garrick founded a farce 
upon the incident, which with the title of the Irish Widow was 
played in 1772. 

Not always at a disadvantage, however, was Goldsmith in these 
social meetings. At times he took the lead, and kept it, to even 
Johnson's annoyance. "The misfortune of Goldsmith in conversa- 
" tion," he would say on such occasions, "is this: he goes on 
" without knowing how he is to get off. His genius is great, but 
" his knowledge is small. As they say of a generous man, it is a 
" pity he is not rich, we may say of Goldsmith, it is a pity he is 
' ' not knowing. He would not keep his knowledge to himself. " 
This is not the way to characterise the talk of an " idiot." Indeed 
sometimes, when the humour suited him, he would put even 
Burke's talk at the same disadvantage as Goldsmith's. Mentioning 
the latter as not agreeable, because it was always for fame, — "and 
' ' the man who does so never can be pleasing ; the man who talks 
" to unburden his mind is the man to delight you," — he would add 
that " an eminent friend of ours" (so Boswell generally introduces 
Burke) was not so agreeable as the variety of his knowledge would 
otherwise make him, because he talked partly from ostentation ; 
and, before the words were forgotten (the next day, if in better 
humour), would not hesitate to put forth Burke's talk as emphati- 
cally the ebullition of his mind, as in no way connected with the 
desire of distinction, and indulged only because his mind was full. . 
Such remarks and comparisons at the least make it manifest that 
Goldsmith's conversation was not the folly which it is too often 
assumed to have been ; though doubtless it was sometimes too 
ambitious, and fell short of the effort implied in it. He did not 
keep sufficiently in mind that precious maxim for which Lady 
Pomfret was so grateful to the good old lady who gave it to her, 



chap, vi.] DINNERS AND TALK. 343 

that when she had nothing to say, to say nothing. " I fired at 
" them all, and did not make a hit ; I angled all night, but I 
" caught nothing ! " was his own candid remark to Cradock on one 
occasion. With a greater show of justice than he cared generally 
to afford him in this matter, Johnson laid his failure, on other 
occasions, rather to the want of temper than the want of power. 
"Goldsmith should not," he said, "be for ever attempting to 
" shine in conversation ; he has not temper for it, he is so much 
y mortified when he fails. Sir, a game of jokes is composed partly 
" of skill, partly of chance ; a man may be beat at times by one 
" who has not the tenth part of his wit. Now, Goldsmith putting 
" himself against another, is like a man laying a hundred to one, 
" who cannot spare the hundred. It is not worth a man's while . . . 
' ' When Goldsmith contends, if he gets the better it is a very little 
' ' addition to a man of his literary reputation ; if he does not get 
" the better, he is miserably vexed." 

It should be added that there were other causes than these for 
Goldsmith's frequent vexation. Miss Reynolds relates that she 
overheard a gentleman at her brother's table, to whom he was 
talking his best, suddenly stop him.in the middle of a sentence with 
"Hush! Hush! Doctor Johnson is going to say something." 
The like was overheard — unless this be the original story adapted 
to her purpose by Miss Reynolds — at the first Academy dinner ; 
when a Swiss named Moser, the first keeper appointed, interrupted 
him " when talking with fluent vivacity," to claim silence for Doctor 
Johnson on seeing the latter roll himself as if about to speak ("Stay, 
" stay, Toctor Shonson is going to zay zomething "), and was paid 
back for his zeal by Goldsmith's retort, " And are you sure you'll 
"comprehend what he says ? " His happy rebuke of a similar subser- 
viency of Boswell's, that he was for turning into a monarchy what 
ought to be a republic, is recorded by Boswell himself, who adds, with 
that air of patronage which is now so exquisitely ludicrous, " for my 
" part I like very well tohear honest Goldsmith talk away carelessly ;" 
and upon the whole evidence it seems clear enough, that, much as 
his talk suffered from his mal-address, in substance it was not in 
general below the average of that of other celebrated men. Certainly, 
therefore, if we concede some truth to the Johnsonian antithesis 
which even good-humoured Langton repeats so complacently, " no 
" man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or 
f ' more wise when he had," we must yet admit it with due allowance. 
Walpole said much the same thing of Hume, whose writings he 
thought so superior to his conversation that he protested the 
historian understood nothing till he had written upon it ; and even 
of his friend Gray he said he was the worst company in the world, 
for he never talked easily : yet in the sense of professed talk, the 



344 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

same might be said of the best company in the world, for in the 
mere " cunning " of retort Walpole himself talked ill, and so did 
Gay ; and so did Dryden, Pope, and Swift ; and so did Hogarth 
and Addison. 

Nothing is recorded of those men, or of others as famous, so clever 
as the specimens of the talk of Goldsmith which Boswell himself 
has not cared to forget. Nay, even he goes so far as to admit, 
that " he was often very fortunate in his witty contests, even when 
" he entered the lists with Johnson himself." An immortal instance 
was remembered by Reynolds. He, Johnson, and Goldsmith, were 
together one day, when the latter said that he thought he could 
write a good fable ; mentioned the simplicity which that kind of 
composition requires ; and observed that in most fables the animals 
introduced seldom talk in character. " For instance," said he, 
" the fable of the little fishes who saw birds fly over their heads,- 
" and, envying them, petitioned Jupiter to be changed into birds. 
" The skill," he continued, " consists in making them talk like little 
" fishes." At this point he observed Johnson shaking his sides 
and laughing, whereupon he made this home thrust. " Why, Mr. 
" Johnson, this is not so easy as you seem to think ; for if you were 
" to make little fishes talk, they would talk like Whales." This 
was giving Johnson what Garrick called a forcible hug, and it 
shook laughter out of the big man in his own despite. But in truth 
no one, as Boswell has admitted, could take such " adventurous 
u liberties" with the great social despot, "and escape unpunished." 
Beauclerc tells us that on Goldsmith originating, one day, a project 
for a third theatre in London solely for the exhibition of new plays, 
in order to deliver authors from the supposed tyranny of managers 
(a project often renewed since, and always sure to fail, for the simple 
reason that authors themselves become managers, and all authors 
cannot be heard), Johnson treated it slightingly : upon which the 
other retorted " Ay, ay, this may be nothing to you, who can now 
' ' shelter yourself behind the corner of a pension ; " and Johnson 
bore it with perfect good humour. But the most amusing instance 
connected with the pension occurred a year or two afterwards, when, 
on the appearance of Mason's exquisite Heroic Epistle, Goldsmith, 
delighted with it himself, carried it off to his friend, and was allowed 
to read it out to him from beginning to end with a running 
accompaniment of laughter, in which Johnson as heartily joined at 
the invocation to George the Third's selected, and in part pilloried, 
pensioners, as at the encounter of Charles Fox with the Jews. 

Does Envy doubt ! "Witness, ye chosen train ! 
Who breathe the sweets of his Saturnian reign ; 
Witness ye Hills, ye Johnsons, Scots, Shebbeares. 
Hark to iny call, for some of you have ears. 



chap, vi.] DINNERS AND TALK. 345 

When one of the most active of the second-rate politicians, and 
the great go-between of the attempted alliance between the Chatham 
and Rockingham whigs, Tommy Townshend, — so called not 
satirically, but to distinguish him from his father, — anticipated in 
the present year that connection of Johnson's and Shebbeare's names 
(I formerly described them pensioned together, " the He-Bear and 
" the She-Bear " as some one humorously said), he did not get off 
so easily. But Johnson had brought these allusions on himself by 
plunging into party- war, at the opening of the year, with a pamphlet 
on the False Alarm, as he called the excitement on Wilkes' s expul- 
sion, in which he did not spare the opposition ; and which, written 
in two nights at Thrale's, continued to attract attention. Boswell 
tells us that when Townshend made the attack, Burke, though of 
Townshend' s party, stood warmly forth in defence of his friend ; 
but the recent publication of the Cavendish Debates corrects this 
curious error. Burke spoke after Townshend, and complained of 
the infamous private libels of the Toivn and Country Magazine 
against members of the opposition, but he did not refer to Towns- 
hend' s attack ; he left the vindication of Johnson to their common 
friend Fitzherbert, who rose with an emphatic eulogy at the close 
of the debate, and called him " a pattern of morality." 

In truth Burke had this year committed himself too fiercely 
to the stormy side of opposition, to be able to stretch his hand 
across even to his old friend Johnson. His friend had cast 
himself with the enemies of freedom, and was left to fare with 
them. The excitement was unexampled. There were yet dissensions 
between the rival parties of opposition, but not such as withheld 
them from concentrating, for this one while at least, the hate and 
bitterness of both on the government. Language, unheard till now, 
was launched against it from both houses. Lord Shelburne dared the 
Premier to find "a wretch so base and mean-spirited," as to take 
the seals Lord Camden had flung down. In evil hour, poor Charles 
Yorke, Lord Rockingham's attorney-general, and sensitive as he was 
accomplished, accepted the challenge ; and then, maddened by his 
own. reproaches, perished within two days, his patent of peerage 
lying incomplete before him. Chatham rose to a height of daring 
which even he had never reached, and, resolving to be "a scarecrow 
" of violence to the gentle warblers of the grove, the moderate whigs 
" and temperate statesmen," prayed that rather than any compromise 
should now be made, or the people should vail their representative 
rights to their governors, either the question might be brought to 
practical issue, or Discord prevail for Ever ! Grafton sank beneath 
the storm, even bodily disabled for his office by the attacks of 
Junius ; and his place was filled by Lord North. But Junius 
gathered strength, the stronger the opponent that faced him ; and 

Q 3 



346 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

his terrors increased as preparation was made to cope with them. 
His libels conquered the law. Language which Burke told the 
House he had read with chilled blood, juries sent away unconvicted. 
In vain were printers hunted down, and small booksellers, and even 
humble milkmen. In vain did " the whole French court with 
"their gaudy coaches and jack boots," go out to hunt the little 
hare. The great boar of the forest, as Burke called the libeller, 
still, and always, broke through the toils ; and sorry was the sport 
of following after vermin. North could not visit the palace, with- 
out seeing the Letter to the King posted up against the wall ; the 
Chief Justice could not enter his court, without seeing the Letter to 
Lord Mansfield impudently facing him. There was no safety in 
sending poor milkmen to prison. There was no protection. The 
thrust was mortal ; but a rapier and a ruffle alone were visible, in 
the dark alley from which it came. 



CHAPTEK VII. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 1770. 

Beneath these dark and desperate struggles of party profligacy, 
the more peaceful current of life meanwhile flowed on, and 
Tgi 4 9 had its graces and enjoyments ; not the least of them from 
Goldsmith's hand. " This day at 12," said the Public 
Advertiser of the 26th of May, "will be published, price two 
c ' shillings, The Deserted Village, a Poem. By Doctor Goldsmith. 
" Printed for W. Griflin, at Garrick's Head in Catherine Street, 
"Strand." Its success was instant and decisive. A second edition 
was called for on the seventh of June, a third on the fourteenth, 
a fourth ( carefully revised ) on the twenty-eighth, and on the 
sixteenth of August a fifth edition appeared. Even Goldsmith's 
enemies in the press were silent, and nothing interrupted the praise 
which greeted him on all sides. One tribute he did not hear, and 
was never conscious of ; yet from truer heart or finer genius he 
had none, and none that should have given him greater pride. 
Gray was passing the summer at Malvern, the last summer of his 
life, with his friend Nicholls, when the poem came out : and he 
desired Nicholls to read it aloud to him. He listened to it with 
fixed attention, and soon exclaimed " This man is a poet." 

The judgment has since been affirmed by hundreds of thousands 
of readers, and any adverse appeal is little likely now to be 
lodged against it. Within the circle of its claims and pretensions, 



chap, vii.] THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 347 

a more entirely satisfactory and delightful poem than the Deserted 
Village was probably never written. It lingers in the memory 
where once it has entered ; and such is the softening influence, on 
the heart even more than the understanding, of the mild, tender, 
yet clear light which makes its images so distinct and lovely, that 
there are few who have not wished to rate it higher than poetry 
of yet higher genius. "What true and pretty pastoral images," 
exclaimed Burke, years after the poet's death, " has Goldsmith in 
" his Deserted Village ! They beat all : Pope, and Philips, and 
" Spenser too, in my opinion." But opinions that seem exaggerated 
may in truth be often reconciled to very sober sense ; and, where 
any extraordinary popularity has existed, good reason is generally 
to be shown for it. Of the many clever and indeed wonderful 
writings that from age to age are poured forth into the world, 
what is it that puts upon the few the stamp of immortality, and 
makes them seem indestructible as nature 1 What is it but their 
wise rejection of everything superfluous ? — being grave histories, 
or natural stories, of everything that is not history or nature ? — 
being poems, of everything that is not poetry, however much it 
may resemble it ; and especially of that prodigal accumulation of 
thoughts and images, which, until properly sifted and selected, is as 
the unhewn to the chiselled marble 1 What is it, in short, but 
that unity, completeness, polish, and perfectness in every part, 
which Goldsmith attained ? It may be said that his range is 
limited, and that whether in his poetry or his prose, he seldom 
wanders far from the ground of his own experience : but within 
that circle, how potent is his magic, what a command it exercises 
over the happiest forms of art, with what a versatile grace it moves 
between what saddens us in humour or smiles on us in grief, and 
how unerring is our response of laughter or of tears ! Thus, his 
pictures may be small ; may be far from historical pieces, amazing 
or confounding us ; may be even, if severest criticism will have it 
so, mere happy tableaux de genre hanging up against our walls ; 
— but, their colours are exquisite and unfading ; they have that 
universal expression which never rises higher than the compre- 
hension of the humblest, yet is ever on a level with the under- 
standing and appreciation of the loftiest ; they possess that familiar 
sweetness of household expression which wins them welcome, 
alike where the rich inhabit, and in huts where poor men lie ; 
and there, improving and gladdening all, they are likely to hang 
for ever. 

Johnson, though he had taken equal interest in the progress of 
this second poem, contributing to the manuscript the four lines 
which stand last, yet thought it inferior to the Traveller. But 
time has not confirmed that judgment. Were it only that the 



348 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

field of contemplation in the Traveller is somewhat desultory, and 
that (as a later poet pointed out) its successor has an endearing, 
locality, and introduces us to beings with whom the imagination is 
ready to contract a friendship, the higher place must be given to 
the Deserted Village. Goethe tells us the transport with which 
the circle he now lived in hailed it, when they found themselves 
once more as in another beloved Wakefield ; and with what zeal 
he at once set to work to translate it into German. All the 
characteristics of the first poem seem to me developed in the 
second : with as chaste a simplicity, with as choice a selectness of 
natural expression, in verse of as musical cadence ; but with yet 
greater earnestness of purpose, and a far more human interest. 
Nor is that purpose to be lightly dismissed, because it more con- 
cerns the heart than the understanding, and is sentimental rather 
than philosophical. The accumulation of wealth has not brought 
about man's diminution, nor is trade's proud empire threatened 
with decay : but too eager are the triumphs of both, to be always 
conscious of evils attendant on even the benefits they bring, and 
of these it was the poet's purpose to remind us. The lesson can 
never be thrown away. No material prosperity can be so great, but 
that underneath it, and indeed because of it, will not still be found 
much suffering and sadness ; much to remember that is commonly 
forgotten, much to attend to that is almost always neglected. 
Trade would not thrive the less though shortened somewhat of 
its unfeeling train ; nor wealth enjoy fewer blessings, if its 
unwieldy pomp less often spumed the cottage from the green. 
4 * It is a melancholy thing to stand alone in one's county," said 
the Lord Leicester who built Holkham, when complimented on 
the completion of that princely dwelling. "I look round, not a 
' ' house is to be seen but mine. I am the giant of Giant-castle, 
"and have eat up all my neighbours." There is no man who has 
risen upward in the world, even by ways the most honourable to 
himself and kindly to others, who may not be said to have a 
deserted village sacred to the tenderest and fondest recollections, 
which it is well that his fancy and his feeling should at times 
revisit. 

Goldsmith looked into his heart and wrote. From that great 
city in which his hard spent life had been diversified with so much 
care and toil, he travelled back to the memory of lives more 
simply passed, of more cheerful labour, of less anxious care, of 
homely affections and humble joys for which the world and all its 
successes offer nothing in exchange. There are few things in the 
range of English poetry more deeply touching than the closing image 
of the lines which show the hunted creature panting to its home. 
It was a thought continually at his heart, and in his hardly less 






chap, vii.] THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 349 

beautiful prose he had said the same thing more than once, for 
no one ever borrowed from himself oftener or more unscrupulously 
than Goldsmith did. 

In all my wanderings round this world of care, 
In all my griefs — and Grod has given mv share — 
I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown, 
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down ; 
To husband out life's taper at the close, 
And keep the flame from wasting, by repose. 
I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, 
Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill ; 
Around my fire an evening group to draw, 
And tell of all I felt, and all I saw ; 
And, as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue, 
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, 
I still had hopes, my long vexations past, 
Here to return — and die at home at last. 

That hope is idle for him. SAveet Auburn is no more. But 
though he finds the scene deserted, for us he peoples it anew ; 
builds up again its ruined haunts, and revives its pure enjoyments ; 
from the glare of crowded cities, them exciting struggles and 
palling pleasures, carries us back to the season of natural pastimes 
and. unsophisticated desires ; adjures us all to remember, in our 
several smaller worlds, the vast world of humanity that breathes 
beyond ; shows us that there is nothing too humble for the loftiest 
and most affecting associations ; and that where human joys and 
interests have been, their memory is sacred for ever! "Vain 
"transitory splendours" he exclaims, of the little >arlour in the 
village alehouse, 

Vain transitory splendours ! could not all 
Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall ! 
Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart 
An hour's importance to the poor man's heart. 
Thither no more the peasant shall repair 
To swest oblivion of his daily care ; 
No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale, 
No more the wood-man' s ballad shall prevail ; 
No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear, 
Relax his ponderous strength, and lean to hear ; 
The host himself no longer shall be found 
Careful to see the mantling bliss go round ; 
Nor the coy maid, half willing to be prest, 
Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest. 

With darker shadows from the terrible and stony truths that 
are written in the streets of cities, the picture is afterwards 
completed ; and here, too, the poet painted from himself. His 
won experience, the suffering for which his heart had always bled, 
the misery his scanty purse was always ready to relieve, are in his 



350 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv| 

contrast of the pleasures of the great, with innocence and health 
too often murdered to obtain them. It was this sympathy with 
the very poor, strongly underlying the most part of all he wrote, 
though seldom appearing on the surface in any formal political 
opinion, which seems to have struck his more observing critics as 
the master-peculiarity in his modes and tendencies of thinking ; 
and hence it may have been that the impression of him, formed in 
the girlhood of the daughter of his attached friend, Lord Clare, 
often repeated in her advanced age to her son, Lord Nugent, and 
by him communicated to me, was ' ' that he was a strong repub- 
lican in principle, and would have been a very dangerous writer 
"if he had lived to the times of the French Revolution." Nor is 
it difficult to understand how such thoughts and fears came in such 
quarters to be connected with him, if we merely observe, to take 
one instance from his Animated Nature in addition to others 
already named, the uncompromising tone of opinion he doubtless 
never hesitated to indulge at Lord Clare's table, or wherever he 
might be, on such a subject as the game-laws. It is certain, with 
reference to the lines I am about to quote, that several " distin- 
guished friends" strongly objected to the views implied in them 
but he let them stand. They would perhaps a3 strongly have 
objected to what was not uncommon with himself, — abandoning 
his rest at night to give relief to the destitute. They would have 
thought the parish should have done what a yet more distin- 
guished friend, Samuel Johnson, once did, and which will 
probably be remembered when all he wrote or said shall have 
passed away, — his picking up a wretched ruined girl, who lay 
exhausted on the pavement, "in the lowest state of vice, poverty, 
"and disease;" taking her upon his back, carrying her to his 
house, and placing her in his bed ; not harshly upbraiding her ; 
taking care of her, with all tenderness, for a long time ; and 
endeavouring, on her restoration to health, to put her in a 
virtuous way of living. 

Here, while the courtier glitters in brocade, 

There the pale artist plies the sickly trade ; 

Here, while the proud their long-drawn pomps display, 

There the black gibbet glooms beside the way. 

The dome where Pleasure holds her midnight reign, 

Here, richly deckt, admits the gorgeous train ; 

Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square, 

The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare. 

Sure scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy ! 

Sure these denote one universal joy ! 

Are these thy serious thoughts ? — Ah, turn thine eyes 

Where the poor houseless shivering female lies. 

She once, perhaps, in village plenty blest, 

Has wept at tales of innocence distrest ; 



oitap. vii.] THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 351 

Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, 

Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn ; 

Now lost to all ; her friends, her virtue fled, 

Near her betrayer's door she lays her head, 

And pinch' d with cold, and shrinking from the shower, 

With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour 

When idly first, ambitious of the town, 

She left her wheel, and robes of country brown. 

Beautifully it is said by Mr. Campbell, that " fiction in poetry 
" is not the reverse of truth, but her soft and enchanted reseni- 
r blance ; and this ideal beauty of nature has seldom been united 
[ ' with so much sober fidelity, as in the groups and scenery of the 
" Deserted Village" It is to be added that everything in it is 
English, the feeling, incidents, descriptions, and allusions ; and 
that this consideration may save us needless trouble in seeking to 
identify sweet Auburn (a name he obtained from Langton) with 
Lissoy. Scenes of the poet's youth had doubtless risen in his 
memory as he wrote, mingling with, and taking altered hue from, 
later experiences ; — thoughts of those early days could- scarcely 
have been absent from the wish for a quiet close to the struggles 
and toil of his mature life, and very probably, nay almost certainly, 
when the dream of such a retirement haunted him, Lissoy formed 
part of the vision ; — it is even possible he may have caught the 
first hint of his design from a local Westmeath poet and school- 
master, who, in his youth, had given rhymed utterance to the old 
tenant grievances of the Irish rural population ; — nor could 
complaints that were also loudest in those boyish days at Lissoy, 
of certain reckless and unsparing evictions by which one General 
Naper (tapper, or Napier) had persisted in improving his estate, 
have passed altogether from Goldsmith's memory. But there was 
nothing local in his present aim ; or if there was, it was the rustic 
life and rural scenery of England. It is quite natural that Irish 
enthusiasts should have found out the fence, the furze, the thorn, 
the decent church, the never-failing brook, the busy mill, even the 
Twelve Good Rules, and Royal Game of Goose. It was to be 
expected that pilgrims should have borne away every vestige of 
the first hawthorn they could lay their hands on. It was very 
graceful and pretty amusement for Mr. Hogan, when he settled 
in the neighbourhood, to rebuild the village inn, and, for 
security against the enthusiasm of predatory pilgrims, to fix 
in the wall "the broken teacups wisely kept for show;" to fence 
round with masonry what still remained of the hawthorn, to prop 
up the tottering walls of what was once the parish school, and 
to christen his furbished-up village and adjoining mansion by 
the name of Auburn. All this, as Walter Scott has said, "is a 



352 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iy. 

"pleasing tribute to the poet in the land of his fathers ;" but 
it certainly is no more. 

Such tribute as the poem itself was, its author offered to 
Sir Joshua Reynolds, dedicating it to him. "Setting interest 
"aside," he wrote, "to which I never paid much attention, I 
"must be indulged at present in following my affections. The 
' ' only dedication I ever made was to my brother, because I loved 
6 ' him better than most other men. He is since dead. Permit 
"me to inscribe this poem to you." How gratefully this was 
received, and how strongly it cemented an already fast friendship, 
needs not be said. The great painter could not rest till he 
had made public acknowledgment and return. He painted his 
picture of Resignation, had it engraved by Thomas Watson, and 
inscribed upon it these words : " This attempt to express a charac- 
" ter in the Deserted Village is dedicated to Doctor Goldsmith, by 
"his sincere friend and admirer, Joshua Reynolds." Nor were 
tributes to the poet's growing popularity wanting from foreign 
admirers. Within two years from its first publication the first 
foreign translation appeared, and obtained grateful recognition 
under Goldsmith's hand. 

What Griffin paid for the poem is very doubtful. Glover first 
tells, and Cooke repeats with additions, the story which Walter 
Scott also believed and repeated, that he had stipulated for a 
hundred pounds as the price, and returned part of it on some one 
telling him that five shillings a couplet was more than any poetry 
ever written was worth, and could only ruin the poor bookseller 
who gave it ; but this is by no means credible (perhaps indeed, of 
all possible speeches, it is the very last that a man is likely to have 
made who, only a few weeks before, had not scrupled to take 500 
guineas from the same publisher, on the mere faith of a book 
which he had hardly even begun to write), though a good authority, 
the Percy Memoir, tells us it would have been " quite in charac- 
" ter." It is presumable, however, that the sum was small ; and 
that it was not without reason he told Lord Lisburn, on receiving 
complimentary inquiries after a new poem at the Royal Academy 
dinner, " I cannot afford to court the draggle-tail muses, my 
" Lord, they would let me starve ; but by my other labours I can 
" make shift to eat, and drink, and have good clothes." Some- 
thing to the same effect, indeed, in the poem itself, had mightily 
stirred the comment and curiosity of the critics. They called 
them excellent but " alarming lines." 

And thou, sweet Poetry, thou loveliest maid, 
Still first to fly where sensual joys invade ; 
Unfit in these degenerate times of shame, 
To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame ; 



chap, vii.] THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 253 

Dear charming nymph, neglected and decried, 
My shame in crowds, my solitary pride ; 
Thou source of all my bliss, and all my woe, 
That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so ; 
Thou guide by which the nobler arts excel, 
Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well ! 

Apollo and the Muses forbid ! was the general critical cry. 
What ! shall the writer of such a poem as this, " the subject of a 
r young and generous king, who loves, cherishes, and understands 
" the fine arts," shall he be obliged to drudge for booksellers, shall 
he be starved into abandonment of poetry ? Even so. There was 
no help for it ; and truly it became him to be grateful that there 
were booksellers to drudge for. " The poverty of authors is a 
common observation, but not always a true one. No author 
can be poor who understands the arts of booksellers. Without 
this necessary knowledge, the greatest genius may starve ; and 
with it, the greatest dunce live in splendour. This knowledge E 
have pretty well dipped into." Thus, in this very month of May 
1770, the most eager young aspirant for literary fame that ever 
trod the flinty streets of London, poor Chatterton, was writing 
home to his country friends. But alas ! his lip was not wetted with 
the knowledge which he fancied he had dipped so deep into. With 
Goldsmith it was otherwise. He had drank long and weary 
draughts, had tasted alike the sweetness and the bitterness of the 
cup, and no longer sanguine or ambitious, had yet reason to confess 
himself not wholly discontented. In many cases it is better to 
want than to have, and in almost all it is better to want than to 
ask. At the least he could make shift, as he said to Lord Lisburn, 
to eat, and drink, and have good clothes. The days which had 
now come to him were not splendid, but neither were they starving 
days ; and they had also brought him such respectful hearing, that, 
of what his really starving days had been, he could now dare to 
speak out, in the hope of saving others. He lost no opportunity 
of doing it. Not even to hi? Natural History did . he turn, with- 
out venting upon this sorrowful theme, in sentences that sounded 
strangely amid his talk of beasts and birds, what lay so near his 
heart. 

The lower race of animals, when satisfied, for the instant moment, are 
perfectly happy ; but it is otherwise with man. His mind anticipates distress, 
and feels the pang of want even before it arrests him. Thus, the mind being 
continually harassed by the situation, it at length influences the constitution, 
and unfits it for all its functions. Some cruel disorder, but no way like 
hunger, seizes the unhapxjy sufferer ; so that almost all those men who have 
thus long lived by chance, and whose every clay may be considered as an 
happy escape from famine, are known at last to die, in reality, of a disorder 
caused by hunger, but which, in the common language, is often called a broken 
heart. Some of these I have known myself, when very little able to relieve 



354: OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book tx. 

them ; and I have been told, by a very active and worthy magistrate, that the 
number of such as die in London for want, is much greater than one would 
imagine — I think he talked of two thousand in a year. 

If this was already written, as from what he afterwards told 
Langton we may assume these portions of the Animated Nature to 
have been, Goldsmith little imagined the immortal name which 
was now to be added to the melancholy list. The writer of the 
sanguine letter I have quoted was doomed to be the next victim. 
He had not been in London many days, at the time when he so 
supposed he had mastered the booksellers ; and in little less than 
three months after sending those hopeful tidings home, he yielded 
up his brain to the terrible disorder of which Goldsmith had seen 
so much : so unlike hunger, though hunger-bred. Gallantly had 
he worked in these three momentous months : had projected 
histories of England, and voluminous histories of London ; had 
written for Magazines, Registers, and Museums endless, the London, 
the Town and Country, the Middlesex Freeholders', the Court and 
City ; had composed a musical burlesque burletta ; had launched 
into politics on both sides ; had contributed sixteen songs for ten 
and sixpence ; had received gladly two shillings for an article ; 
had lived on a halfpenny roll, or a penny tart and a glass of water 
a day, enjoying now and then a sheep's tongue ; had invented all 
the while brave letters about his happiness and success to the only 
creatures that loved him, his grandmother, mother, and sister, at 
Bristol ; had even sent them, out of his so many daily pence, bits 
of china, fans, and a gown ; — and then, one fatal morning, after 
many bitter disappointments (one of them precisely what Gold- 
smith had himself undergone in as desperate distress, just as one 
of his expedients for escape, by " going abroad as a surgeon," had 
been also what Goldsmith tried), having passed some three days 
without food, and refused his poor landlady's invitation to dinner, 
he was found dead in his miserable room, the floor thickly strewn 
with scraps of the manuscripts he had destroyed, a pocket-book 
memorandum lying near him to the effect that the booksellers owed 
him eleven pounds, and the cup which had held arsenic and water 
still grasped in his hand. It was in a wretched little street out of 
Holborn ; the body was taken to the bone-house of St. Andrew's, 
but no one came to claim it ; and in due time the pauper burial- 
ground of Shoe-lane received what remained of Chatterton. " The 
" marvellous boy ! The sleepless soul who perished in his pride!" 
He was not eighteen. 

The tragedy had all been acted out before Goldsmith heard of 
any of its incidents. I am even glad to think, that, during the 
whole of the month which preceded the catastrophe, he was absent 
from England. 



I 



chap, viii.] A VISIT TO PARIS. 355 



CHAPTER VIII. 



A VISIT TO PARIS. 1770. 

Goldsmith had quitted London on a visit to Paris in the middle 
of July. " The Professor of History," writes Mary Moser, 
the daughter of the keeper of the Academy, — telling Fuseli, -^, ' .' 
at Rome, how disappointed the literary people connected 
with the new institution had been, not to receive diplomas of 
membership like the painters, — "is comforted by the success of 
"his Deserted Village, which is a very pretty poem, and has lately 
r put himself under the conduct of Mrs. Horneck and her fair 
"daughters, and is gone to France; and Doctor Johnson sips 
g 'his tea and cares not for the vanity of the world." Goldsmith 
himself, with most pleasant humour, has described in a letter to 
Sir Joshua Reynolds what happened to the party up to their 
lodgment in Calais, at the Hotel d'Angleterre. They had not 
arrived many hours when he sent over this fragment of a dispatch, 
merely to satisfy him of the safe arrival of Mrs. Horneck, the 
young ladies, aud himself. " My dear Friend," he wrote, 

We had a very quick passage from Dover to Calais, which we performed 
in three hours and twenty minutes, all of us extremely sea-sick, which must 
necessarily have happened, as my machine to prevent sea-sickness was not 
completed. We were glad to leave Dover, because we hated to be imposed 
upon ; so were in high spirits at coming to Calais, where we were told that a 
little money would go a great way. Upon landing two little trunks, which 
was all we carried with us, we were surprised to see fourteen or fifteen fellows 
all running down to the ship to lay their hands upon them ; four got under 
each trunk, the rest surrounded, and held the hasps ; and in this manner our 
little baggage was conducted, with a kind of funeral solemnity, till it was 
safely lodged at the custom-house. We were well-enough pleased with the 
people's civility till they came to be paid : when every creature that had the 
happiness of but touching our trunks with their finger, expected sixpence ; and 
had so pretty, civil a manner of demanding it, that there was no refusing 
them. When we had done with the porters, we had next to speak with the 
custom-house officers, who had their pretty civil way too. We were directed 
to the Hotel d'Angleterre, where a valet de place came to offer his service ; 
and spoke to me ten minutes before I once found out that he was speaking 
English. We had no occasion for his service, so we gave him a little money 
because he spoke English, and because he wanted it. I cannot help men- 
tioning another circumstance. I bought a new ribbon for my wig at Canter- 
bury, and the barber at Calais broke it in order to gain sixpence by buying 
me a new one. 

This was not a very promising beginning ; but the party, con- 



356 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv 



turning to carry with, them the national enjoyment of scolding 
everything they met with, passed on through Flanders, and to Paris 




JE^ 



— by way of Lisle. The 
latter city was the 
scene of an incident afterwards absurdly 
misrelated. Standing at the window of 
their hotel to see a company of soldiers in the square, the beauty of 
the sisters Horneck drew such marked admiration, that Goldsmith, 
with an assumption of solemnity to heighten drollery which was 
generally a point in his humour, and as often was very solemnly 
misinterpreted, turned off from the window with the remark that 
elsewhere, he, too, could have his admirers. The Jessamy Bride, 
Mrs. Gwyn, was asked about the occurrence not many years ago ; 
remembered it as a playful jest ; and said how shocked she had 
subsequently been "to see it adduced in print as a proof of his 
" envious disposition." The readers of Boswell will remember that it 
is so related by him. " When accompanying two beautiful young 
"ladies with their mother on a tour in France, he w r as seriously 
" angry that more attention was paid to them than to him ! " 



chap, vin.] A VISIT TO PARIS. 357 

At Lisle another letter to Reynolds was begun, but laid aside, 
because everything they had seen was so dull that the description 
would not be worth reading. Nor had matters much improved when 
they got to Paris. Alas ! Goldsmith had discovered a change in 
himself since he traversed those scenes with only his youth and his 
poverty for companions. Lying in a barn was no disaster then. 
Then, there were no postilions to quarrel with, no landladies to be 
cheated by, no silk coat to tempt him into making himself look 
like a fool. The world was his oyster in those days, which with 
his flute he opened. He expressed all this very plainly in a letter 
to Reynolds soon after their arrival, dated from Paris on the 29th 
of July. He is anxious to get back to what Gibbon, when he be- 
came a member of the club, called the relish of manly conversation, 
and the society of the brown table. He is getting nervous about 
his arrears of work. He dares not think of another holiday yet, 
though Reynolds had proposed, on his return, a joint excursion 
into Devonshire. He is already planning new labour. He is even 
thinking of another comedy ; and is therefore glad that Colman's 
suit in chancery has ended by confirming his right as acting 
manager (the whole quarrel was made up the following year by 
Mr. Harris's quarrel with Mrs. Lessingham). But here is the 
letter, as printed from the original in possession of Mr. Singer, 
and very pleasant are its little references to those weaknesses of 
his own which he well knew had never such kindly interpretation 
as from Reynolds : as where he whimsically protests that it never 
can be natural in himself to be stupid, where he reports himself 
saying as a good thing a thing which was not understood, and 
where he describes the silk coat he has purchased which makes 
him look like a fool ! 

My Dear Friend, I began a long letter to you from Lisle giving a 
description of all that we had done and seen, but finding it very dull, and 
knowing that you would show it again, I threw it aside and it was lost. You 
see by the top of this letter that we are at Paris, and (as I have often heard 
you say) we have brought our own amusement with us, for the ladies do not 
seem to be very fond of what we have yet seen. 

With regard to myself I find that travelling at twenty and at forty are 
very different things. I set out with all my confirmed habits about me, and 
can find nothing on the Continent so good as when I formerly left it. _ One of 
our chief amusements here is scolding at every thing we meet with, and 
praising every thing and every person we left at home. You may judge 
therefore whether your name is not frequently bandied at table among us. 
To tell you the truth I never thought I could regret your absence so much as 
our various mortifications on the road have often taught me to do.^ I could 
tell you of disasters and adventures without number, of our lying in barns, 
and of my being half-poisoned with a dish of green peas, of our quarrelling 
with postilions and being cheated by our landladies, but I reserve all this for 
an happy hour which I expect to share with you upon my return. 

I have little to tell you more but that we are at present all well, and 



358 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book id 

expect returning when we have staid out one month, which I should not care 
if it were over this very day. I long to hear from you all : how you yourself 
do, how Johnson, Burke, Dyer, Chamier, Colman, and every one of the club 
do. I wish I could send you some amusement in this letter, but I protest I 
am so stupified by the air of this country (for I am sure it can never be 
natural) that I have not a word to say. I have been thinking of the plot of a 
comedy which shall be entitled A Journey to Paris, in which a family shall 
be introduced with a full intention of going to France to save money. You 
know there is not a place in the world more promising for that purpose. As 
for the meat of this country I can scarce eat it, and though we pay two good 
shillings an head for our dinner, I find it all so tough, that I have spent less 
time with my knife than my picktooth. I said this as a good thing at table, 
but it was not understood. I believe it to be a good thing. 

As for our intended journey to Devonshire I find it out of my power to 
perform it, for, as soon as I arrive at Dover I intend to let the ladies go on, 
and I will take a country lodging somewhere near that place in order to do 
some business. I have so outrun the constable, that I must mortify a Little 
to bring it up again. For God's sake the night you receive this take your pen 
in your hand and tell me something about yourself, and myself, if you know 
of anything that has happened. About Miss Reynolds, about Mr. Bickerstaff, 
my nephew, or anybody that you regard. I beg you will send to Griffin the 
bookseller to know if there be any letters left for me, and be so good as to send 
them to me at Paris. They may perhaps be left for me at the porter's lodge 
opposite the pump in Temple-lane. The same messenger will do. I expect 
one from Lord Clare from Ireland. As for others I am not much uneasy 
about. 

Is there anything I can do for you at Paris ? I wish you would tell me. The 
whole of my own purchases here, is one silk coat which I have put on, and 
which makes me look like a fool. But nc more of that. I find that Colman 
has gained his lawsuit. I am glad of it. I suppose you often meet. I will 
soon be among you, better pleased with my situation at home than I ever was 
before. And yet I must say, that if anything could make France pleasant, 
the very good women with whom I am at present would certainly do it. I 
could say more about that, but I intend showing them this letter before I send 
it away. What signifies teasing you longer with moral observations when the 
business .of my writing is over. I have one thing only more to say, and of 
that I think every hour in the day, namely, that I am your most 

Sincere and most affectionate friend, 

Oliver Goldsmith. 

Direct to me at the Hotel de Danemarc, 

Rue Jacob, Fauxbourg St. Germains. 

Little more is to be added of this excursion. It was not made 
more agreeable to Goldsmith by an unexpected addition to the 
party in the person of Mr. Hickey (the "special attorney" who is 
niched into Retaliation), who joined them at Paris, and whose 
habit of somewhat coarse raillery was apt to be indulged too freely 
at Goldsmith's expense. One of the stories Hickey told on his 
return, however, seems to hare been true enough. Goldsmith 
sturdily maintained that a certain distance from one of the 
fountains at Versailles was within reach of a leap, and tumbled 
into the water in his attempt to establish that position. He also 
made his friends smile by protesting that all the French parrots he 






chap. IX] THE HAUNCH OF VENISON k GAME OF CHESS. 350 

had beard spoke such capital French that he understood them 
perfectly, whereas an English parrot, talking his own native Irish, 
was quite unintelligible to him. It was also told of him, in proof 
of his oddity, that on Mrs. Horneck desiring him more than once, 
when they had no place of protestant worship to attend, to read 
them the morning service, his uniform answer was, " I should be 
" happy to oblige you, my dear madam, but in truth I do not 
"think myself good enough." This, however, we may presume 
to think perhaps less eccentric than his friends supposed it to be. 

Goldsmith did not stay in Dover as he had proposed. He 
brought the ladies to London. Among the letters forwarded to 
him in Paris had been an announcement of his mother's death. 
Dead to any consciousness or enjoyment of life, she had for some 
time been ; blind, and otherwise infirm ; and hardly could the 
event have been unexpected by him, or by any one. Yet are 
there few, however early tumbled out upon the world, to whom the 
world has been able to give any substitute for that earliest friend. 
Not less true than affecting is the saying in one of Gray's letters : 
"I have discovered a thing very little known, which is, that in 
" one's whole life one never can have any more than a single 
" mother." The story (which Northcote tells) that would attribute 
to Goldsmith the silly slight of appearing in half-mourning at this 
time, and explaining it as for a "distant" relation, would not be 
credible of any man of common sensibility ; far less of him. Mr. 
William Filby's bills enable us to speak with greater accuracy. As 
in the instance of his brother's death, they contain an entry of a 
"suit of mourning," sent home on the 8th of September. 

But indulgence of sorrow is one of the luxuries of the idle ; and 
whatever the loss or grief that might afflict him, the work that 
waited Goldsmith must be done. 



CHAPTEK IX. 



THE HAUNCH OF VENISON AND GAME OF CHESS. 1770-1771. 

Eight days after he put on mourning for his mother's death, on 
the 16th of September 1770, Goldsmith was signing a ^^ 
fresh agreement with Davies for an Abridgment of his ^ 4 ' 2> 
Roman History in a duodecimo volume : for making 
which, " and for putting his name thereto," Davies undertook to 
pay fifty guineas. The same worthy bibliopole had published in 
the summer his Life of Pamell, to which I formerly referred. It 



38 J OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

was lightly and pleasantly written ; had some really good remarks 
on the defects as well as merits of Parnell's translations ; and 
contained that pretty illustration (whereof all who have written 
biography know the truth as well as beauty), of the difficulty of 
obtaining, when fame has set its seal on any celebrated man, those 
personal details of his obscurer days which his contemporaries 
have not cared to give : "the dews of the morning are past, and 
"we vainly try to continue the chase by the meridian splendour." 
It also contained remarks on the ornamented schools of poetry, in 
which allusions, not in the best taste, were levelled against Gray, 
and less specifically against his old favourite Collins ; yet remarks, 
I must add, of which the principle was sound enough, though 
pushed, as good principles are apt to be, to an absurd extreme. For, 
of styles all bristling with epithets, Voltaire himself was not more 
intolerant than Goldsmith ; nor ever with greater zest denounced 
the adjective, as the substantive's greatest enemy. But merits as 
well as faults in the Parn ell-memoir, Tom Davies of course tested 
by the sale ; and with result so satisfactory that another memoir 
had at once been engaged for, and now occupied Goldsmith on his 
return. Bolingbroke was the subject selected, for its hot party- 
interest of course ; indeed the life was to be prefixed to a republi- 
cation of the Dissertation on Parties : but it was not the writer's 
mode, whatever the bookseller may have wished, to turn a literary 
memoir into a political pamphlet ; and what was written proved 
very harmless that way, with as little in it to concern Lord North 
as Mr. Wilkes, and of as small interest, it would seem, to the 
writer as to either. l ' Doctor Goldsmith is gone with Lord Clare 
"into the country," writes Davies to Granger, "and I am 
" plagued to get the proofs from him of his Life of Lord Boling- 
" broke." However, he did get them; and the book was pub- 
lished in December. It must be admitted, I fear, that it is but a 
slovenly piece of writing. The two closing paragraphs, summing 
up Bolingbroke's character, alone have any pretensions to strength 
or merit of style ; and these were so marked an imitation of that 
Johnsonian manner in which Goldsmith's writing for the most 
part is singularly deficient, whatever his conversation may at 
times have been, that the resemblance did not escape his friends 
of the Monthly Review. They closed their bitter onslaught on 
the Bolingbroke biography, of course without any other founda- 
tion for the slander, by broadly insinuating the authorship of 
Johnson in these particular passages ; " being as much superior to 
"the rest of the composition as the style and manner of Johnson 
"are to those of his equally pompous but feeble imitator." It 
ought perhaps to be added that it was the very rare occasional 
indulgence in imitative sentences of this kind, and in conver- 



chap, ix.] THE HAUNCH OF VENISON & GAME OF CHESS. 361 

sation rather than in books (for its occurrence in the latter is so 
infrequent as, except in this single instance, to be hardly discover- 
able), that doubtless so often caused Goldsmith to be foolishly 
talked about as belonging to the ' ' Johnsonian school," with which 
he had absolutely nothing in common. 

• That charge of using Johnson's hard words in conversation, I 
may here also remark, already brought against hirn by Joseph 
Warton, is much harped upon by Hawkins. "He affected," 
says that ill-natured gentleman, " Johnson's style and manner of 
" conversation, and, when he had uttered, as he often would, a 
p laboured sentence, so tumid as to be scarce intelligible, would 
"ask, if that was not truly Johnsonian?" JSTor has Boswell 
omitted it : "To me and many others it appeared that he 
"studiously copied the manner of Johnson, though indeed upon a 
"smaller scale." It is however to be observed that the same 
thing is found said so often, and of so many other people, as for 
the most part to lose its distinctive or pertinent character. Of 
Boswell himself it is undoubtedly far more certain than of Gold- 
smith, that he was ludicrous for this kind of imitation of Johnson. 
Walpole laughs at him for it ; Madame D'Arblay highly colours 
all its most comical incidents ; and above all we see it in the 
conversations of his own wonderful book, — so that when he 
proceeds to turn the laugh on Johnson's landlord, little Allen the 
printer of Bolt-court, for "imitating the stately periods and slow 
" and solemn utterance of the great man," and on another occasion 
professes himself "not a little amused by observing Allen perpetu- 
' ' ally struggling to talk in the manner of Johnson, like the little 
"frog in the fable blowing himself up to resemble the stately ox," 
the effect is amazingly absurd. On the whole, though it is by no 
means unlikely, as has just been said, that Goldsmith, as well as 
others who looked up to Johnson, may have fallen now and then 
into unconscious Johnsonianisms, the charge in its deliberate and 
exaggerated form must rather be regarded as a sort of falling in with 
a fashionable cant, in vogue more or less against all with whom 
Johnson was familiar. It is at least indisputable that no trace of the 
j absurd imitation alleged is discoverable, as a habit, in Boswell's 
' reports of Goldsmith's conversations ; where, if it existed at all, 
' that reporter must surely have revealed it who was too truthful to 
1 suppress his own, and where indeed one might fairly expect to 
I have found it even somewhat exaggerated. 

Goldsmith continued with Lord Clare during the opening 
months of 1771. They were together at Gosfield, and at 
Bath ; and it was in the latter city the amusing incident ^ ^ 
occurred which Bishop Percy has related, as told him by 
the Duchess of Northumberland. The Duke and Duchess occupied 

R 



362 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

a house on one of the parades next door to Lord Clare's, and 
were surprised one day, when about to sit down to breakfast, to 
see Goldsmith enter the breakfast-room as from the street, and, 
without notice of them or the conversation they continued, fling 
himself unconcernedly, " in a manner the most free and easy," on 
a sofa. After a few minutes, "as he was then perfectly known to 
" them both, they inquired of him the Bath news of the day ; and 
' ' imagining there was some mistake, endeavoured by easy and 
" cheerful conversation to prevent his being too much embarrassed, 
"till, breakfast being served up, they invited him to stay and 
"partake of it ;" but upon this, the invitation calling him back 
from the dream-land he had been visiting, he declared with pro- 
fuse apologies that he had thought he was in his friend Lord Clare's 
house, and in irrecoverable confusion hastily withdrew. " But 
" not," adds the Bishop, "till they had kindly made him promise 
' ' to dine with them. " 

Of Lord Clare's friendly familiarity with the poet, this incident 
gives us proof. Having himself no very polished manners, for he was 
the Squire Gawkey of the libels of his time, he might the better 
tolerate Goldsmith's ; but that their intercourse just at present 
was as frequent as familiar, seems to have been because, at this 
time, Lord Clare had most need of a friend. " I am told," says 
a letter- writer of the day, "that Doctor Goldsmith now generally 
' ' lives with his countryman Lord Clare, who has lost his only son, 
" Colonel Nugent" There was left to him, however, an only 
daughter, the handsome girl whom Reynolds painted ; who w T as 
married, in the year after Goldsmith's death, to the first Marquis 
of Buckingham ; and with whom, she being as yet in her child- 
hood, and he (as she loved long afterwards to say, and her son 
often repeated to me) being never out of his, Goldsmith became 
companion and playfellow. He taught her games, she played him 
tricks, and, to the last hour of her long life, "dearly loved his 
"memory." Yet even in this friendly house he was not without 
occasional mortifications, such as his host could not protect him 
from ; and one of them was related by himself. In his " diverting 
"simplicity," says Boswell, speaking with his own much more 
diverting air of patronage, Goldsmith complained one day, in a 
mixed company, of Lord Camden. " I met him," he said, ' ' at Lord 
" Clare's house in the country ; and he took no more notice of me 
' ' than if I had been an ordinary man. " At this, according to 
Boswell, himself and the company laughed heartily ; whereupon 
Johnson stood forth in defence of his friend. "Nay, gentlemen, 
"Doctor Goldsmith is in the right. A nobleman ought to have 
" made up to such a man as Goldsmith ; and I think it is much 
"asrainst Lord Camden that he neglected him." 



chap, ix.] THE HAUNCH OF VENISON & GAME OF CHESS. 363 

It was doubtless much for Lord Clare that he did not. By that 
simple means, he would seem to have lessened many griefs, and 
added to many an enjoyment. Attentions are cheaply rendered 
that win such sympathy as a true heart returns ; and if, from what 
Wraxall describes as the then spacious avenues of Gosfield-park, 
Lord Clare had sent an entire buck every season to his friend's 
humble chambers in the Temple, the single Haunch of Venison 
which Goldsmith sent back would richly have repaid him. The very 
agreeable verses which bear that name were written this year, and 
appear to have been written for Lord Clare alone ; nor was it till 
two years after their writer's death that they obtained a wider 
audience than his immediate circle of friends. Yet, written with no 
higher aim than of private pleasantry, a more delightful piece of 
humour, or a more finished piece of style, has probably been 
seldom written. There is not a word to spare, every word is 
in its place, the most boisterous animal spirits are controlled 
by a charming good taste, and an indescribable airy elegance 
pervades it all. Its very incidents seem of right to claim a place 
here, so naturally do they fall within the drama of Goldsmith's 
life. 

Allusions in the lines fix their date to the early months of 1771 ; 
and it was probably on his return from the visit to which reference 
has just been made, that Lord Clare's side of venison had reached 
him. (On the whole, I may take occasion to remark, I prefer the 
text of the first edition, though the second had ten additional lines, 
and is likely, as alleged, to have been printed from Goldsmith's 
corrected copy.) 

Thanks, my Lord, for your Venison, for finer or fatter 
£" * t rang'd in a forest, or smok'd in a platter ; 
The Haunch was a picture for Painters to study, 
The white was so white, and the red was so ruddy ; 
Though my stomach was sharp, I could scarce help regretting, 
To spoil such a delicate picture by eating : 
I had thoughts, in my Chambers to place it in view, 
To be shown to my friends as a piece of virtu ; 
As in some Irish houses, where things are so-so, 
j One gammon of bacon hangs up for a show ; — 

But, for eating a rasher of what they take pride in, 
They'd as soon think of eating the pan it is fried in. 

But these witty fancies yield to more practical views as he 
I contemplates the delicate luxury ; and he bethinks him of the 
appetites most likely to do it justice. 

To go on with my Tale — as I gaz'd on the Haunch, 
I thought of a friend that was trusty and staunch ; 
So I cut it, and sent it to Reynolds undrest, 
To paint it, or eat it, just as he lik'd best. 

it 2 



364 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv 

Of the Neck and the Breast I had next to dispose ; 

'Twas a Neck and a Breast that might rival M — r — se : 

But in parting with these I was puzzled again, 

With the how, and the who, and the where, and the when : 

There's H— d, and C— y, and H— rth, and H— ff, 

I think they love Venison — I know they love Beef. 

Ah ! he had excellent reason to know it. These were four of 
his poor-poet pensioners, three of whom, in the first uncorrected 
copy of the poem, stood imdisguisedly as " Coley, and Williams, and 
Howard, and Hiff ; " but though it is said that for Williams he 
meant to substitute a surgeon named Hogarth, then living in 
Leicester-square, Hiffernan is alone recognisable now. M — r — se 
was Lord Townshend's Dorothy Monroe, to whose charms he devoted 
his verse. 

While thus I dehated, in reverie center' d, 

An acquaintance, a friend as he call'd himself, enter' d ; 

An underbred, fine-spoken fellow was he, 

And he smil'd as he looked at the Venison and me. 

This is the hero of the poem ; and sketched so vividly, with a 
humour so life-like and droll, that he was probably a veritable 
person. In the first published copy indeed, which, as I have said, 
contains many touches preferable to what replaces them in the second 
version, he is described as 

A fine spoken Custom-house officer he, 

Who smil'd as he gaz'd on the Venison and me. 

In what follows, the leading notion is founded on one of 
Boileau's satires, but the comedy is both more rich and more 
delicate. The visitor ascertains that the venison i& really 
Goldsmith's. 

If that be the case then, cried he, very gay, 

I'm glad I have taken this house in my way. 

To-morrow you take a poor dinner with me ; 

No words — I insist on't — precisely at three : 

We'll have Johnson and Burke ; all the Wits will be there ; 

My acquaintance is slight, or I'd ask my Lord Clare. 

And, now that I think on't, as I am a sinner ! 

We wanted this Venison to make out the dinner. 

What say you — a pasty ? — it shall, and it must, 

And my wife, little Kitty, is famous for crust. 

Here, Porter ! — this Venison with me to Mile-end ; 

No stirring — I beg, my dear friend — my dear friend ! 

Thus snatching his hat, he brush t off like the wind. 

And the porter and eatables follow'd behind. 

Left alone to reflect, having emptied my shelf, 
And nobody loith me at sea but myself, 
Though I could not help thinking my gentleman hasty, 
Yet Johnson, and Burke, and a good Venison pasty, 



chap, ix.] THE HAUNCH OF VENISON & GAME OF CHESS. 365 

Were things that I never disliked in my life, 
Though clogg'd with a coxcomb, and Kitty his wife. 
So next Day in due splendour to make my approach, 
I drove to his door in my own hackney-coach. 

Sad is the disappointment. He had better have remained (as, 
in those love-letters with which the newspapers were now making 
mirth for the town, the Duke of Cumberland had said to Lady 
Grosvenor), with "nobody with him at sea but himself." Johnson 
and Burke can't come. The one is at Thrale's, and the other at 
that horrible House of Commons. But never mind, says the host ; 
you shall see somebody quite as good. And here Goldsmith 
remembered his former visitor, Parson Scott, who had just now 
got his fat Northumberland livings in return for his Anti-Sejanus 
letters, and was redoubling anti-whig efforts through the same 
channel of the Public Advertiser, in hope of a bishopric very pro- 
bably, with the signatures of Panurge and Cinna. " There is a 
"villain who writes under the signature of Panurge," exclaimed 
•the impetuous Barre, from his seat on the 12th of March, "a noted 
" ministerial scribbler undoubtedly supported by government. He 
"has this day published the grossest abuse upon the Duke of 
" Portland, charging him with robbing Sir James Lowther ; yet 
"this dirty scoundrel is suffered to go unpunished." Not wholly; 
for Goldsmith, to whom Burke had probably talked of the matter 
at the club, now ran his polished rapier through the political 
parson. Never mind for Burke and Johnson, repeats his host ; 
I've provided capital substitutes. 

For I knew it, he cried, both eternally fail, 
The one with his speeches, and t'other with Thrale ; 
But no matter, I'll warrant we'll make up the party, 
With two full as clever, and ten times as hearty. 
The one is a Scotchman, the other a Jew, 
They're both of them merry, and authors like you. 
The one writes the Snarler, the other the Scourge; 
Some think he writes Cinna — he owns to Panurge. 

The only hope left is the pasty ; though it looks somewhat 
alarming when dinner is served, and no pasty appears. There is 
fried liver and bacon at the top, tripe at the bottom ; there is 
spinach at the sides, with "pudding made hot;" and in the 
middle a place where the pasty "was — not." Now Goldsmith 
can't eat bacon or tripe ; and even more odious to him than either 
is the ravenous literary Scot, and the talk of the chocolate-cheeked 
scribe of a Jew (who likes "these here dinners so pretty and 
"small"): but still there's the pasty promised, with Kitty's famous 
crust ; and of this a rumour goes gradually round the table, till 
the Scot, though already replete with tripe and bacon, announces 



366 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

" a corner for thot ;" and " we'll all keep a corner," is the general 
resolve, and on the pasty everything is concentrated : when the 
terrified maid brings in, not the pasty, but the catastrophe, in the 
shape of terrible news from the baker. To him had the pasty been 
carried, crust and all : 

And so it fell out, for that negligent sloven 
Had shut out the Pasty on shutting his oven. 

And having thus described the first important manifestation of 
that power of easy, witty, sarcastic verse which, just as life was 
closing on Goldsmith, began to be a formidable weapon in his 
hands, here may be the fitting occasion to connect with the Haunch 
of Venison a poem of which the date and circumstances attending 
its composition are unknown ; which has never been publicly 
ascribed to him until now, and would seem, for some unaccount- 
able reason, to have failed to find its way into print ; yet which I 
cannot hesitate to call his, not simply because the manuscript is 
undoubtedly his handwriting, but for the better reason that what 
it contains is not unworthy of his genius. In the absence of 
certain information I shall forbear to speculate on the probable 
circumstances which led to the selection of such a subject as an 
exercise in verse, and content myself with presenting a very brief 
outline of Yida's Game of Chess in the English heroic metre, as it 
has been found transcribed in the writing of Oliver Goldsmith by 
my friend Mr. Bolton Corney, whose property it is and who kindly 
permits my use of it. 

It is a small quarto manuscript of thirty-four pages, containing 
(579 lines, to which a fly-leaf is appended, in which Goldsmith 
notes the differences of nomenclature between Yida's chessmen and 
our own. It has occasional interlineations and corrections, but 
rather such as would occur in transcription, than in a first or 
original copy. Sometimes, indeed, choice appears to have been 
made (as at page 29) between two words equally suitable to the 
sense and verse, as "to" for "toward;" but the insertions and 
erasures refer almost wholly to words or lines accidentally omitted 
and replaced. The triplet is always carefully marked ; and though 
it is seldom found in any other of Goldsmith's poems, I am disposed 
to regard its frequent recurrence here, as even helping in some 
degree to explain the motive which had led him to the trial of an 
experiment in rhyme comparatively new to him. If we suppose 
him, half consciously it may be, taking up the manner of the great 
master of translation, Dryden, who was at all times so much a 
favourite with him, he would certainly be less apt to fall short in so 
marked a peculiarity, than to err perhaps a little on the side of 
excess. Though I am far from thinking such to be the result in 



chap, ix.] THE HA TJNCH OF VENISON & GAME OF CHESS. 367 

the present instance. The effect of the whole translation is really 
very pleasing, and the mock heroic effect appears to be not a little 
assisted by the reiterated use of the triplet and alexandrine. As 
to any evidences of authorship derivable from the appearance of the 
manuscript, it is only necessary to add another word. The lines in the 
translation have been carefully counted, and the number is marked 
in Goldsmith's hand at the close of his transcription. Such a fact 
is of course only to be taken in aid of other proof ; but a man is 
not generally at the pains of counting, — still less, I should say, in 
such a case as Goldsmith's, of elaborately transcribing, — lines 
which are not his own. 

Of Vida himself there is little occasion to speak. What student 
of literature does not know the gay, courtly, scholarly priest, the 
favourite of Leo the magnificent, whom the seventh Clement 
invested with the mitre of Alba, and who was crowned with a 
laurel unfading as his wit by that great English poet, in whose 
fancy even the ancient glories of Italy seemed to linger still, while 

A Raffaelle painted and a Yida sung. 
Immortal Vida ! on whose honoured brow 
The poet's bays and critic's ivy grow : 
Cremona now shall ever boast thy name, 
As next in place to Mantua, next in fame ! 

Yet when those lines appeared, in the most marvellous youthful 
poem of our language (the Essay of Criticism, written at the age of 
20), Pope's greatest debt to Yida was still to be incurred. The 
Game of Chess enriched the Rape of the Lock with the delightful 
Game at Ombre. "Nor would it be possible better to express, to a 
reader unacquainted with the original, that charm in Vida's poem 
which appears to have amused and attracted Goldsmith's imagina- 
tion, than by referring to the close exactness in the movements of 
the game between the Baron and Belinda, on which Pope has 
lavished such exquisite fancy, and wit so delicate and masterly. 
With all this, Yida has combined in a yet greater degree the subtle 
play of satire implied in the elevation of his theme to the epic 
rank. The machinery employed, and the similes used, are those in 
which the epic poets claim a peculiar property. Yet, at the same 
time, so closely are the most intricate and masterly moves of chess 
expressed in the various fortunes of the combatants, in the penal- 
ties which await their rashness or the success which attends their 
stratagems, that Pope Leo thought the ignorant might derive a 
knowledge of the game from Yida's hexameters alone. 

Whether or not Goldsmith had any personal skill at chess, I 
have not been able to discover ; but that he was not entirely 
ignorant of it may be presumed from the facility and elegance of 
his paraphrase. When Mr. George Jeffreys translated the same 



368 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

poem (one of seven versions of it made in English), and asked 
Pope's opinion of its execution, the poet thought it unbecoming to 
deliver his opinion " upon a subject to which he is a stranger ;" 
but perhaps this was the civil avoidance of a disagreeable request, 
for what knowledge of the subject, more than Vida himself pos- 
sessed, should his translator, or the critic of his translator, require ? 
Nevertheless, there may be enough in Pope's remark to favour the 
presumption of some acquaintance with the game in any one who 
should undertake such a labour of love connected with it ; and' 
this is strengthened by the confidence and freedom of Goldsmith's 
verse. There is even something in the note he appends to the 
conclusion of his labour that might appear as if written by one 
familiar with chess. " Archers," he says, referring to Yida's 
verse, "are what we call Bishops; Horse are what we call Knights ; 
' ' Elephants are what we call Tow'rs, Castles, or Rooks. Apollo 
" has the white men, Mercury the black." 

But before these Deities of the strife are introduced, let a few of 
the opening lines marshal in due precedence the opposing forces. 

So moVd the boxen hosts, each double-lin'd, 

Their diff'rent colours floating in the wind : 

As if an army of the Gauls should go, 

With their white standards o'er the Alpine snow 

To meet in rigid fight on scorching sands 

The sun-burnt Moors and Memnon's swarthy bands. 

The forces being brought into the field, the order of the fray 
is next shown, and the stated laws by which their several weapons 
of assault or defence are subject to be controlled. Here is seen the 
elegant and easy art, not of the poet simply, but of the master of 
the laws of the game. 

To lead the fight, the Kings from all their bands 
Choose whom they please to bear their great commands. 
Should a black Hero first to battel go, 

Instant a white one guards against the blow ; > 

But only one at once can charge or shun the foe. J 

****** 

But the great Indian beasts, whose backs sustain 

Yast turrets arm'd, when on the redd'ning plain 

They join in all the terrour of the fight, 

Forward or backward, to the left or right 

Bun furious, and impatient of confine 

Scour through the field, and threat the farthest line. 

Yet must they ne'er obliquely aim their blows ; 

That only manner is allowed to those > 

Whom Mars has favour' d most, who bend the stubborn bows. J 

These glancing sidewards in a straight career, 

Yet each confin'd to their respective sphere 

Or white or black, can send th' unerring dart 

Wing'd with swift death to pierce through ev'ry part. 






chap, ix.] THE HAUNCH OF VENISON & GAME OF CHESS. 369 

The fiery steed, regardless of the reins, 

Comes prancing on ; but sullenly disdains 

The path direct, and boldly wheeling round, 

Leaps o'er a double space at ev'ry bound : 

And shifts from white or black to diff'rent colour' d ground. 

But the fierce Queen, whom dangers ne'er dismay, 

The strength and terrour of the bloody day, 

In a straight line spreads her destruction wide, 

To left or right, before, behind, aside, &c. 

The divine machinery is now set in motion. The Gods survey 
the forces in array, and, with their usual desire to enliven the 
dullness of Olympus, are anxious to engage along with them ; but 
! Jove checks and forbids them to take part on either side, and, 
summoning Mercury and Apollo, places the dark warriors under 
command of Hermes and the white under that of Phoebus, restrict- 
ing the divine interference to these two, and limiting their power 
by the expressed regulations of the contest. 

Then call'd he Phcebus from among the Pow'rs, 
And subtle Hermes, whom in softer hours 
Fair Maia bore : Youth wanton'd in their face, 
Both in life's bloom, both shone with equal grace. 
Hermes as yet had never wing'd his feet ; 
As yet Apollo in his radiant seat 
Had never driv'n his chariot through the a:r, 
Known by his bow alone and golden hair. 
These Jove commissioned to attempt the fray, 
And rule the sportive military day. 

And now, as the fray proceeds under these respective leaders, it 
becomes the pleasant art of the poet to show you how superior in 
such a conflict are the sly resources of stratagem and deceit over 
those of a more generous and manly nature. The first advantage 
falls to Mercury, and Apollo can only relieve his King at great 
sacrifice and loss. 

Apollo sigh'd, and hast'ning to relieve 

The straighten' d Monarch, griev'd that he must leave 

His martial elephant exposed to fate, 

And view'd with pitying eyes his dang'rous state. 

First in his thoughts however was his care 

To save his King, whom to the neighb'ring square 

On the right hand, he snatcht with trembling flight ; 

At this with fury springs the sable Knight, 

Drew his keen sword, and rising to the blow, 

Sent the great Indian brute to shades below. 

fatal loss ! for none except the Queen 

Spreads such a terroui through the bloody scene. 

Yet shall you ne'er unpunisht boast your prize, 

The Delian Grod with stern resentment cries ; > 

And wedg'd him round with foot, and pour'd. in fresh supplies. J 

* * * * * * T.O 



370 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 






Fir'd at tins great success, with double rage 

Apollo hurries on his troops t' engage, 

For blood and havock wild ; and, while he leads 

His troops thus careless, loses both his steeds : 

For if some adverse warriours were o'erthrown. 

He little thought what dangers threat his own. 

But slyer Hermes with observant eyes 

Marcht slowly cautious, and at distance spies I 

"What moves must next succeed, what dangers next arise. 

Flushed with the success of his wily policy, however, Hermes is 
now betrayed into a violation of the laws of the fight, which might 
have escaped a less subtle eye than that of Phoebus ; but the fraud 
is detected, exposed, and laughed at. Nothing can be more 
charming than the facility and grace with which the Latin poet thus 
expresses all the various incidents to which an ordinary game of 
chess might be subject, while, at the same time, he never for an 
instant lays aside the dignity, the politeness, the poetry of his 
heroic verse. Nor is the absence of all effort more apparent in 
Vida's than in Goldsmith's lines. 

He smil'd, and turning to the Gods he said ; 

Though, Hermes, you are perfect in your trade, 

And you can trick and cheat to great surprise, 

These little slights no more shall blind my eyes ; I 

Correct then if you please the move you thus disguise. 

The Circle laugh' d aloud ; and Maia's son 

(As if it had but by mistake been done) 

Recalled his Archer, &c. 

The combat is now resumed with greater desperation on both 
sides, and its fortunes vary more and more. Its interest becomes 
at last too intense for the spectators. Mars secretly helps Hermes, 
Vulcan moves on tip-toe to the aid of Phcebus, every art and 
resource is called in on both sides, Mercury becomes fretful, Apollo 
more cheerful. Then the Queens meet in deadly encounter, while 
countless lives are poured out around them ; and the black amazon 
is slain by the white, who, in return, falls, struck by a sable archer. 
But the fair monarch's bereavement is soon consoled by the spirited 
ambition which brings one of his lost partner's attendants gallantly 
up into her place. 

(Then the pleas'd King gives orders to prepare 
The Crown, the Sceptre, and the Royal Chair, 
And owns her for his Queen. ) 

At this, the vexation of Hermes becomes for a time irrepressible 
but, warned by the loss into which again his temper betrays him, 
he recovers self-possession, effects a diversion by new arts, resumes 
his masterly stratagems, places a new queen by his black monarch's 



chaf. x.] A ROUND OF PLEASURES. 371 

side, and again with equal forces threatens and appals his 
adversary. 

Fierce comes the sable Queen, with, fatal threat 

Surrounds the Monarch in his royal seat ; 

Rusht here and there, nor rested till she slew 

The last remainder of the whiten' d crew. 

Sole stood the King ; the midst of all the plain, 

"Weak and defenseless ; his companions slain. 

As when the ruddy morn ascending high 

Has chac'd the twinkling stars from all the sky ; 

Tour star, fair Yenus, still retains its light, 

And loveliest goes the latest out of sight. 

No safety's left, no gleams of hope remain ; 

Yet did he not as vanquisht quit the plain : 

But try'd to shut himself between the foe, "] 

Unhurt through swords and spears he hop'd to go I 

Untill no room was left to shun the fatal blow. 

For if none threaten' d his immediate fate, 

And his next move must ruin all his state ; 

All their past toil and labour is in vain, 

Yain all the bloody carnage of the plain, 

Neither would triumph then, neither the laurel gain. 

But not so fortunate is the fair-haired king, on whom the rival 
monarch now steadily advances, and, watching his opportunity for 
bringing up his queen, smiles as the fatal blow, no longer evitable, 
is struck by his swarthy partner. The fight is over, and Mercury 
remains master of the field. 

And so, resuming the progress of my narrative, I leave without 
further remark these pleasant and lively verses, which I should 
scarcely have quoted at such length if they were not here for the first 
time printed, — as yet remained generally inaccessible, — and, in 
whatever view regarded, are at least a striking and unexpected 
new fact in the life of Oliver Goldsmith. 



CHAPTEE X. 

V ROUND OF PLEASURES. 1771. 



It may have been on hearing the Haunch of Venison read in the 
Beauclerc and Bunbury circles (it was from a copy which 
Lord Clare had given Bunbury they were printed after the ^ 4 g 
writer's death) that Horace Walpole conceded to the " silly 
"changeling," as he called Goldsmith, " bright gleams of parts ;" 
this being the style of verse he relished most, and could value 



372 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

beyond Travellers and Deserted Villages. It was in a later letter 
Walpole made it a kind of boast that he had never exchanged 
a syllable with Johnson in his life, and had never been in a room 
with him six times ; for the necessity of finding himself, once a 
year at least, perforce in the same room with him, and with Gold- 
smith too, did not till the present year begin. On St. George's 
day, 1771, Sir Joshua Reynolds took the chair at the first annual 
dinner of the Royal Academy : where the entertainers, himself and 
his fellow academicians, sat surrounded by such evidence of claims 
to admiration as their own pencils had adorned the walls with, and 
their guests were the most distingushed men of the day ; the high- 
est in rank and the highest in genius, the poet as well as the prince, 
the minister of state and the man of trade. Goldsmith attended 
this and every dinner until his death, and so became personally 
known to several men belonging to both parties in the state, who 
doubtless at any other time or in any other place would hardly have 
remembered or acknowledged his name. Nor, it may be added, has 
the attraction of these social meetings suffered diminution since. All 
who have had the privilege of invitation to them can testify to the 
interest they still excite ; to the fact that princes and painters, 
men of letters and ministers of state, tradesmen and noblemen, 
still assemble at that hospitable table with objects of a common ; 
admiration and sympathy around them ; to the happy occasion 
which their friendly greetings afford, for the suspension of all ex- 
citements of rivalry not between artists or academicians alone, but 
between the most eager combatants of public life, ministerial and 
ex-ministerial ; and to the striking effect with which, as the twi- 
light of the summer evening gathers round while the dinner is 
in progress, the sudden lighting of the room at its close, as the 
president proposes the health and pronounces the name of the 
sovereign, appears to give new and startling life to the forms and 
colours on the pictured walls. 

Undoubtedly this annual dinner, then, must be pronounced one 
of the happiest of those devices of the president by which he steered 
the new and unchartered Academy through the quicksands and 
shoals that had wrecked the chartered institution out of which it 
rose. Academies cannot create genius ; academies had nothing to 
do with the begetting of Hogarth, or Reynolds, or Wilson, or Gains- 
borough, the greatest names of our English school ; but they may assist 
in the wise development of such original powers, they may guide and 
regulate their prudent and successful application, and above all they 
may, and do, strengthen the painter's claims to consideration and 
esteem, and give, to that sense of dignity which should invest every 
Liberal art, and which too often passes for an airy nothing amid the 
hustle and crowd of more vulgar pretences, " a local habitation and 



CHAP. X.] 



A HOUND OF PLEASURES. 



373 



i a name." This was the main wise drift of Reynolds and his fellow 
labourers ; it was the charter that held them together in spite of 




all their later dissensions ; and to this day it 
outweighs the gravest fault or disadvantage 
which has yet been charged 
against the Royal Academy. 

A fragment of the conversa- 
tion at this first Academy dinner 
has survived ; and takes us from 
it to the darkest contrast, to the 
most deplorable picture of human 
hopelessness and misery, which 
even these pages have described. 
Goldsmith spoke of an extraor- 
dinary boy who had come up to 
London, from Bristol, died very 
suddenly and miserably, and left 
a wonderful treasure of ancient 
poetry behind him. Horace 
Walpole listened carelessly at 
first, it would seem ; but very 
soon perceived that the subject of conversation had a special 
interest for himself. Some years afterwards he repeated what 



374 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

passed, with an affectation of equanimity which even then he did 
not feel. " Dining at the Royal Academy," he said, " Doctor 
' ' Goldsmith drew the attention of the company with an account of 
( ' a marvellous treasure of ancient poems lately discovered at Bristol, 
" and expressed enthusiastic belief in them, for which he was laughed 
"at by Doctor Johnson, who was present. I soon found this was 
" the trouvaille of my friend Chatterton, and I told Doctor Gold- 
" smith that this novelty was known to me, who might, if I had 
" pleased, have had the honour of ushering the great discovery to 
" the learned world. You may imagine, sir, we did not at all agree 
" in the measure of our faith ; but though his credulity diverted 
" me, my mirth was soon dashed ; for on asking about Chatterton, 
" he told me he had been in London, and had destroyed himself. 
" The persons of honour and veracity who were present will attest 
" with what surprise and concern I thus first heard of his death." 
Yes ; for the concern was natural. Even a Goldsmith credulity, 
for once, would have stood Walpole in better stead. His mirth was 
dashed at the time, and his peace was for many years invaded, by 
that remorseful image of Chatterton. ' ' From the time he resisted 
"the imposition," says Miss Hawkins in her considerate way, "he 
" began to go down in public favour." An imposition it undoubt- 
edly was, even such an imposition as he had himself attempted with 
his Castle of Otranto ; and he had a perfect right on that ground 
to resist it. It was no guilt he had committed, but it was a great 
occasion lost. The poor boy who invented Rowley (the most 
wonderful invention of literature, all things considered) had not 
only communicated his discovery to the " learned Mr. Walpole," 
but the learned Mr. Walpole had with profuse respect and deference 
believed in it, till Gray and Mason laughed at him ; when, turning 
coldly away from Chatterton's eager proposals, he planted in that 
young ambitious heart its bitterest thorn. As for Goldsmith's 
upholding of the authenticity of Roivley, it may pass with a smile, 
if it really meant anything more than a belief in poor Chatterton 
himself ; and it is a pity that Doctor Percy should have got up a 
quarrel with him about it, as he is said to have done. There is 
nothing so incredible that the wisest may not be found to believe. 
Hume believed in Ossian once, though a few years later he doubted, 
and at his death scornfully disbelieved. 

Goldsmith's stay in London, at this time, was to see his 
English History through the press ; and it did not long detain 
him. But his re-appearance in the Temple now seldom failed to 
bring him new acquaintances. His reputation kept no one at a 
distance ; for his hospitable habits, his genial unaffected ways, 
were notorious to all : and in particular to his countrymen. The 
Temple student from Ireland, with or without introduction, seems 



chap, x.] A ROUND OF PLEASURES. 375 

to have walked into his chambers as into a home. To this period 
belong two such new acquaintances, sufficiently famous to have 
survived for recollection. The one was a youth named Robert 
Day, afterwards one of the Irish judges and more famous for his 
amiability than his law, first made known to Goldsmith by his 
namesake John Day, afterwards an advocate in India ; the other 
was this youth's friend and fellow-student, now ripening for a great 
career, and the achievement of an illustrious name. The first 
strong impression of Henry Grattan's accomplishments was made 
upon Goldsmith ; and it need not be reckoned their least distinc- 
! tion. Judge Day lived to talk and write to a biographer of the 
poet about these early times ; and described the " great delight " 
which the conversation and society of Grattan, then a youth of 
about nineteen, seemed to give to their more distinguished country- 
man Again and again he would come to Grattan's room in 
Essex-court; till "his warm heart," Mr. Day modestly adds, 
Y became naturally prepossessed towards the associate of one whom 
"he so much admired." 

Goldsmith's personal appearance and manners made a lively 
impression on the young Templar. He recalled them vividly after 
a lapse of near seventy years, and Day's description is one of the 
best we have. He was short, he says ; about five feet five or six 
inches ; strong, but not heavy in make, and rather fair in com- 
plexion ; his hair, such at least as could be distinguished from his 
wig, was brown. "His features were plain, but not repulsive; 
"certainly not so when lighted up by conversation." Though his 
complexion was pale, his face round and pitted with the small-pox, 
and a somewhat remarkable projection of his forehead and his 
upper lip suggested excellent sport for the caricaturists, the expres- 
sion of intelligence, benevolence, and good humour, predominated 
over every disadvantage, and made the face extremely pleasing. 
This indeed is not more evident in Reynolds's paintings of it, than 
in Bunbury's whimsical drawings ; though I fancy it with more of 
a simple, plaintive expression, than has been given to it by the 
president, who, with a natural and noble respect, was probably too 
anxious to put the author before the man. His manners were 
kindly, genial, and "perhaps on the whole, we may say not 
"polished:" at least, Mr. Day explains, without that refinement 
and good breeding which the exquisite polish of his compositions 
would lead us to expect. He was always cheerful and animated, 
"often indeed boisterous in his mirth ;" entered with spirit into 
convivial society ; contributed largely to its enjoyments by soli- 
dity of information, and by the naivete' and originality of his 
character ; talked often without premeditation, and laughed loudly 
without restraint. It was a laugh ambitious to compete with even 



376 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

Johnson's : which Tom Davies, with an enviable knowledge of 
natural history, compared to the laugh of a rhinoceros ; and which 
appeared to Boswell, in their midnight walkings, to resound from 
Temple-bar to Fleet-ditch. To such explosions of mirth from 
Goldsmith, it would seem, the Grecian coffee-house now oftenest 
echoed ; for this had become the favourite resort of the Irish and 
Lancashire Templars, whom he delighted in collecting around him, 
in entertaining with a cordial and unostentatious hospitality, and 
in occasionally amusing with his flute or with whist, " neither of 
" which he played very well." Of his occupations and his dress at 
the time, Judge Day confirms and further illustrates what is 
already known to us. He was composing light and superficial 
works, he says, memoirs and histories ; not for fame, but for the 
more urgent need of recruiting exhausted finances. To such 
labours he returned, and shut himself up to provide fresh matter 
for his bookseller, and fresh supplies for himself, whenever his 
funds were dissipated ; " and they fled more rapidly from his 
"being the dupe of many artful persons, male and female, who 
" practised upon his benevolence." With a purse replenished by 
labour of this kind, adds the worthy judge, the season of relaxa- 
tion and pleasure took its turn in attending the theatres, Rane- 
lagh, Vauxhall, and other scenes of gaiety and amusement ; which 
he continued to frequent as long as his supply held out, and where 
he was fond of exhibiting his muscular little person in the gayest 
apparel of the day, to which was added a bag- wig and sword. 

This favourite costume, it appears, involved him one day in a 
short but comical dialogue with two coxcombs in the Strand, one 
of whom, pointing to Goldsmith, called to his companion "to look 
"at that fly with a long pin stuck through it :" whereupon, says 
Mr. Day, the sturdy little poet instantly called aloud to the 
passers-by to 'caution them against "that brace of disguised 
"pickpockets;" and, to show that he wore a sword as well for 
defence from insolence as for ornament, retired from the footpath 
into the coach- way to give himself more space, ' ' and half drawing, 
" beckoned to the witty gentleman armed in like manner to follow 
"him: but he and his companion thinking prudence the better 
' ' part of valour, declined the invitation, and sneaked away amid 
"the hootings of the spectators." The prudent example was 
followed not long afterwards by his old friend Kenrick, who, — 
having grossly libelled him in some coarse lines on seeing his name 
"in the list of mummers at the late masquerade," and being, by 
Goldsmith himself at an accidental meeting in the Chapter coffee- 
house, not only charged with the offence but with personal respon- 
sibility for it, — made shuffling and lame retreat from his previ- 
ously avowed satire, and publicly declared his disbelief of the foul 



•hap. x.] A ROUND OF PLEASURES. 377 

mputations contained in it. Yet an acquaintance of both entered 
;he house soon after Goldsmith had quitted it, and relates that he 
:bund Kenrick publicly haranguing the coffee-room against the man 
:o whom he had just apologised, and showing off both the igno- 
rance of science (a great subject with the "rule maker") and the 
mormous conceit of Goldsmith, by an account of how he had on 
some occasion maintained that the sun was not eight days or so 
more in the northern than in the southern signs, and, on being 
referred to Maupertuis for a better opinion, had answered " Mau- 
I pertuis ! I know more of the matter than Maupertuis." 

The masquerade itself was a weakness to be confessed. It was 
imong the temptations of the winter or town Ranelagh which was 
this year built in the Oxford-road, at an expense of several thou- 
sand pounds, and with such dazzling magnificence (it is now the 
poor faded Pantheon, of Oxford-street) that "Balbec in all its 
"glory" was the comparison it suggested to Horace Walpole. 
Here, and at Vauxhall, there is little doubt that Goldsmith was 
often to be seen ; and even here his friend Reynolds good-naturedly 
|kept him company. "Sir Joshua and Doctor Goldsmith at 
" Vauxhall" is a fact that now frequently meets us in the Garrick 
Correspondence. "Sir Joshua and Goldsmith," writes Beauclerc 
jfco Lord Charlemont, "have got into a round of pleasures." 
!" Would you imagine," he adds in another letter, "that Sir Joshua 
"is extremely anxious to be a member of Almacks 1 You see 
"what noble ambition will make a man attempt." Whether the 
i same noble ambition animated Goldsmith, — whether the friends 
lever appeared in red-heeled shoes to imitate the leading maccaro- 
nis, or, in rivalry of Charles Fox and Lord Carlisle, masqueraded 
I at any time as exquisitely-dressed "running footmen," — is not 
j recorded ; but such were the fashionable follies of the day, indulged 
inow and then by the gravest people. "Johnson often went to 
"Ranelagh," says Mr. Maxwell, "which he deemed a place of 
"innocent recreation." "I am a great friend to these public 
i | amusements, sir," he said to Boswell ; " they keep people from 
}"vice." Poor Goldsmith had often to repent such pleasures, 
notwithstanding. Sir Joshua found him one morning, on entering 
his chambers unannounced, walking quickly about from room to 
' room, making a football of a bundle which he deliberately kicked 
before him ; and on enquiry found it was a masquerade dress, 
bought when he could ill afford it, and for which he was thus 
I doing penance. He was too poor to have anything in his possession 
, that was not useful to him, he said to Reynolds ; and he was 
therefore taking out the value of his extravagance in exercise. 
He had sometimes to do penance, also, in other forms. His 
j peculiarities of person and manner would for the most part betray 



378 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

him, whatever his disguise might be, and he was often singled out 
and played upon by men who could better sustain their disguises 
than himself. In this way he had generally to listen to gross abuse 
of his own writings, by the side of extravagant praise of those of ' 
others whom he most bitterly disliked. It was so managed, too, 
that he should overhear himself misquoted, and parodied ; till at 
last, in the hopeless impossibility of retaliation, he had frequently 
been seen abruptly to quit the place amid the hardly disguised 
laughter of his persecutors. Among his acquaintance at this time 
was a Mr. James Brooke (related to the author of the Fool of 
Quality, and himself somewhat notorious for having conducted the 
North Briton for Wilkes), whose daughter became afterwards 
resident in the family of Mr. John Taylor ; and from his letters 
we learn that " Miss Clara Brooke, being once annoyed at a 
* ' masquerade by the noisy gaiety of Goldsmith, who laughed 
" heartily at some of the jokes with which he assailed her, was 
" induced in answer to repeat his own line in the Deserted Village. 

' And a loud laugh which spoke the vacant mind.' 

" Goldsmith was quite abashed at the application, and retired ; as 
"if by the word vacant he rather meant barren, than free from 
" care." This last remark, the reader will observe, pleasantly 
suggests a new reading for the celebrated line which would make it 
much more true than the ordinary reading does. Some of the 
best of our now living writers are as famous for the loud laugh as 
for the well-stored mind, and Johnson, we have just heard, had a 
laugh like a rhinoceros, though what particular form of laugh that 
may be Tom Davies does not explain. 

Other allusions to a habit of Goldsmith's, however, which did 
not admit of even so much practical repentance as that of frequent- 
ing masquerades, are incidentally made in the letters of the time. 
Judge Day has mentioned that he was fond of whist, and adds 
that he played it particularly ill ; but in losing his money he never 
lost his temper. In a run of bad luck and worse play, he would 
fling his cards upon the floor, and exclaim " Byefore George! I 
"ought for ever to renounce thee, fickle, faithless fortune!" I 
have traced the origin of this card-playing to the idle days on 
Ballymahon ; and that the love of it continued to beset him, 
there is no ground for questioning. But it may well be doubted ' 
if anything like a grave imputation of gambling could with fairness . 
be raised upon it. Mr. Cradock, who made his acquaintance at the 
close of this year, tells us ' ' his greatest real fault was, that if he 
* ' had thirty pounds in his pocket, he would go into certain com- 
" panies in the country, and in hopes of doubling the sum, would 
"generally return to town without any part of it :" and another 



chap, x.] A ROUND OF PLEASURES. 379 

acquaintance tells us that the "certain companies" were supposed 

to be Beauclerc and men of that stamp. But this only provokes a 

smile. The class to which Beauclerc belonged, were the men like 

Charles Fox or Lord Stavordale, Lord March or Lord Carlisle, 

whose nightly gains and losses at Almacks, which had now taken 

precedence of White's, were at this time the town talk ; and though 

, Goldsmith could as little afford his thirty pounds lost in as many 

, nights at loo, as Lord Stavordale or Charles Fox Ms eleven thousand 

lost by one hand at hazard, the reproach of putting it in risk with 

,jas much recklessness does not seem really chargeable to him. 

When Garrick accused him of it, he was smarting under an attack 

I upon himself, and avowedly retaliating. The extent of the folly 

i is great enough, when merely described as the indulgence among 

j private friends, at an utterly thoughtless cost, of a real love of 

j card-playing. Such it appears to have been ; and as such it will 

■ shortly meet us at the Bunburys', the Chambers's, and other 
houses he visited ; where, poorer than any one he was in the habit 
of meeting, he invariably played worse than any one, generally lost, 

i and always more than he could afford to lose. Let no reproach 
. really merited be withheld, in yet connecting the habit with a 
| worthier inducement than the love of mad excitement or of mise- 
; rable gain. " I am sorry," said Johnson, " I have not learned to 
j I ■ play at cards. It is very useful in life. It generates kindness, 

■ "and consolidates society." If that innocent design was ever the 
inducement of any man, it may fairly be assumed for Goldsmith. 

His part in his English History completed, there was nothing to 
prevent his betaking himself to the country ; but it was not for 
amusement he now went there. He was resolved again to write 
for the theatre. His necessities were the first motive ; but the 
determination to try another fall with sentimental comedy, no 
doubt very strongly influenced him. Poor Kelly's splendid career 
had come to a somewhat ignominious close. No sooner had his 
sudden success given promise of a rising man, than the hacks of 
the ministry laid hold of him, using him as the newspaper tool 
they had attempted to make of Goldsmith ; and when Garrick 
announced his next comedy, A Word to the Wise, a word to a 
much wider audience, exasperated by its author's servile support of 
their feeble and profligate rulers, went rapidly round the town, and 
sealed poor Kelly's fate. His play was hardly listened to. His 
melancholy satisfaction was that he had fallen before liberty and 
Wilkes, not before laughter and wit ; but the sentence was a 
decisive one. Passed at Drury-lane in 1770, he had, with a now 
play, attempted its reversal at Covent-garden in the present year ; 
but to little better purpose, though his name had been carefully 
concealed, and " a young American clergyman not yet arrived in 



380 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

" England " put forward as the author. On the fall of Hugh 
Kelly, however, there had arisen a more formidable antagonist in I 
the person of Hichard Cumberland. He came into the field with i 
every social advantage. He was the son and great grandson of a 
bishop ; his mother was the celebrated Bentley's daughter ; he had 
himself held a fellowship of Trinity ; and, connected as private 
secretary with Lord Halifax, he had passed through the subordinate 
political offices, when weariness of waiting for promotion turned 
his thoughts to the stage. His first comedy, ushered in by a 
prologue in which he attacked all contemporary dramatists, and 
complimented Garrick as "the immortal actor," was played at 
Covent-garden ; and Garrick being present, and charmed with the 
unexpected compliment (for in earlier days he had rejected a 
tragedy by Cumberland), Fitzherbert, in whose box he was, made 
the author and actor known to each other, a sudden friendship 
was struck up, and Cumberland's second comedy secured for 
Drury-lane. This was the West Indian ; produced with decisive I 
success in the present year, and an unquestionably strong reinforce- | 
ment of the sentimental style. Cumberland thought himself, 
indeed, the creator of his own school, and affected ignorance of the ; 
existence of poor Kelly ; but that was only one of many weaknesses i 
he afterwards more fully developed, and which Sheridan amusingly 
satirised in Sir Fretful Plagiary. He vouchsafed ridiculous airs of 
patronage to men who stood confessedly above him ; professed a 
lofty indifference to criticism that tortured him ; abused those 
dramatists most heartily whose notions he was readiest to borrow ; 
and had a stock of conceit and self-complacency which was proof 
against every effort to diminish it. Goldsmith discovered all this, 
long before Sheridan ; subtly insinuated it in those famous lines, 

Here Cumberland lies having acted his parts, 
The Terence of England, the mender of hearts ; 
A nattering painter, who made it his care, 
To draw men as they ought to he, not as they are. 
His gallants are all faultless, his women divine, 
And Comedy wonders at being so fine ! 
Like a tragedy queen he has dizen'd her out, 
Or rather like Tragedy giving a rout, &c. 

which were written in a spirit of exquisite persiflage at once detected 
by the lively Mrs. Thrale ; and lived to receive amusing confir- 
mation of its truth, in Cumberland's grave gratitude for these very 
verses. He had not discovered their real meaning, even when he 
wrote his Memoirs five-and-thirty years later. He remained still 
grateful to Goldsmith for having laughed at him ; and so cordial 
and pleasant is the laughter, that his mistake may perhaps fairly 
be forgiven. 






chap, x.] A ROUND OF PLEASURES. 381 

Nevertheless, Goldsmith was now conscious of an opponent in 
the author of the West Indian who challenged his utmost exertion ; 
and, eager again to make it in behalf of the merriment, humour, 
and character of the good old school of comedy (Colman so far 
encouraged this purpose, as to revive the Good Natured Man for 

, ; a night or two during the run of the West Indian), withdrew to 
the quiet of a country lodging to pursue his labour undisturbed. 
The Shoemaker's Paradise was no longer his ; but he continued 
his liking for the neighbourhood, and had taken a single room in a 
farmer's house near the six mile stone on the Edgware-road. It 
so suited his modest wants and means, and he liked the farmer's 

, family so much, that he returned to it the following summer to 
write his Natural History, " carrying down his books in two 
r returned post chaises ;" and it was then that Boswell's curiosity 
was moved to go and see the place, taking with him Mr. Mickle, 
translator of the Lusiad, and author of the ballad of Cumnor 
Hall. "Goldsmith was not at home ; but having a curiosity to 
" see his apartment we went in, and found curious scraps of 
" descriptions of animals, scrawled upon the wall with a black-lead 
r pencil." Seeing these, Boswell no doubt would remind his 
friend of what he had heard Johnson say, "Goldsmith, sir, will 
" give us a very fine book upon the subject ; but if he can distin- 
guish a cow from a horse, that, I believe, may be the extent of 
r his knowledge of natural history ;" and very probably he would 
proceed to ascertain, by closer examination of the black-lead 
scrawls, whether or not that distinction had yet been thoroughly 
mastered. 

No doubt Goldsmith began with very imperfect knowledge, the 
labour which was now his country occupation ; but perhaps neither 
Johnson nor any other of his friends knew the pains he had been 
taking to supply his defects, and the surprise he was thus preparing 
for them he unhappily did not live himself to enjoy. He had not 
forgotten his fishing and otter-hunting " when a boy " in Ireland ; 
or the nest of the heron, " built near a school-house" he well 
knew ; or the five young bats he had found in one hole together ; or 
the great Irish wolf-dog he took such pleasure in describing ; or his 
absorbing interest in the seals, kept by a gentleman known to him 
in that early time. In London he was himself well known, at the 
Tower, for his frequent visits to the "lions" there, and with the 
Queen's menagerie at Buckingham-gate he was perfectly familiar ; 
in the former place he had been at no small pains to measure 
"through the bars" and "as well as I could" an enormous tiger, 
and in the latter he had narrowly escaped a kick from a terrified 
zebra. Many such amusing experiences are set down in his 
volumes, which, whatever their defects of information may be, 



332 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

are at least thoroughly impressed with the love of nature and 
natural objects, with a delighted enjoyment of the beauties and 
wonders of creation, and with that devoutly unaffected sense of 
religion, that cheerful and continual piety, which such contempla- 
tions inspire. We hardly need to be told, after reading the book, 
that almost all of it was written in the country, either here, or at 
Kingsbury, or in some other rural place near London : and, as we 
observe its occasional humorous notices of things to be seen at 
country fairs, of the giants, the dwarfs, or other vagrant notabilities 
with which he has " sometimes conversed," the possibility occurs to 
us that if Boswell and his friend could have ascertained from the 
farmer's family the exact road which The Gentleman (as they called 
their lodger) had taken, he might have been discovered in some 
adjoining lane or common, questioning the proprietor of a 
travelling booth ; hearing a highly accomplished raven " sing the 
" Black Joke with great distinctness, truth, and humour ; " 
listening to that "ridiculous duet" between the giant and the 
dwarf which was so popular at the time among the country 
labourers and their children ; observing the man without hands or 
legs apply his stumps to the most convenient purposes ; mar- 
velling to see two white negroes born of black parents ; laughing^ 
at the monkey amusing itself in imposing on the gravity of a cat ; 
unspeakably amazed when he first saw the size of the elephant ; 
admiring the canary-bird that . had been taught, at the word of 
command, to pick up letters of the alphabet so as to spell any 
person's name in company ; attracted by the hare on his hind 
legs with such "a remarkable good ear," who used his forepaws 
as hands, beat the drum, danced to music, and went through the 
manual exercise ; and, though doubting "the credibility of the 
" person who showed " the bonassus, and thus letting him feel that 
a showman's tricks would not always pass upon travellers, yet 
not the less ready with a pleasant candour to admit that he had 
" seen sheep that would eat flesh, and a horse that was fond of 
1 ' oysters. " 

Such experiences as these we must doubtless cany with us, if we 
would also understand the somewhat strange unconsciousness with 
which, in this pleasant Natural History book, even greater marvels 
and conjectures yet more original were quietly accepted ; as where 
he throws out grave intimation of the perfect feasibility of im- 
proving the breed of the zebra into an animal for common use ' ' as 
"large as the horse, as fleet, as strong, and much more beautiful ;" 
or where, speaking of the ostrich, he seriously indulges the expec- 
tation that "posterity may avail themselves of this creature's 
" abilities ; and riding upon an ostrich may one day become the 
" favourite, as it most certainly is the swiftest, mode of convey- 



-hap. x.] A ROUND OF PLEASURES. 383 

mce." And in like manner, when he gravely relates the story 
>f the Arabian Caliph who marked with an iron ring a dolphin 
jaught in the Mediterranean, and so identified it for the self-same 
dolphin caught afterwards in the Red Sea ; when he gives 
Margrave's account of the orderly deliberations and debates of 
the Ouarines ; when he transcribes from a letter in the German 
Ephemerides the details of a fight between an enormous serpent 
md a buffalo, wherein the bones of the latter, as the folds of his 
3nemy entwine him, are heard to crack as loud as the report of a 
3annon ; when he tells what he has found in Father Labat of the 
monkey's mode of managing an oyster in the tropics, how he will 
pick up a stone and clap it between the opening shells, and 
then return at leisure to eat the fish up at his ease ; when he 
relates the not less marvellous manner in which the same sort of 
mtelligent monkey manages at his pleasure to enjoy a fine crab, by 
putting his tail in the water, letting it be seized, and drawing 
rat with a violent jerk the victim of appetite ; when he repeats 
svhat he has heard of Patagonian horses not more than fourteen 
lands high, carrying men nine feet high ; when he tells Gesner's 
jtory of the hungry pike seizing the mule's nose ; or the more 
narvellous story in which Gesner celebrates the two nightingales 
who were heard repeating what they had overheard of a long 
ind not remarkably decent conversation between a drunken tapster 
ind his wife, as well as of the talk of two travellers about an 
mpending war against the Protestants, — in all these and many 
)ther cases, notwithstanding his care to give in every case his 
mthorities, it is too manifest that for his own part he sees nothing 
ihat may not be believed. Indeed he avouches his belief at times 
|.n very amusing ways ; nor is it possible to refrain from smiling 
it the gravity with which, after reporting a Munchausen relation 
ibout all the dogs of a Chinese village turning out for pursuit and 
ittack, when they happen to see a man walking through the street 
whose trade it is to kill and dress them, he adds : "This I should 
•'hardly have believed but that I have seen more than one instance 
:< of it among ourselves. I have seen a poor fellow who made a prac- 
1 tice of stealing and killing dogs for their skins, pursued in full cry 
"for three or four streets together by all the bolder breed of dogs, 
§ while the weaker flew from his presence with affright . . such is the 
mffacb." Nevertheless, perhaps the cautious reader will be as little 
disposed to accept it for a fact as to believe that other marvel, 
Khich "as it comes from a variety of the most credible witnesses, 
'"■' we cannot refuse our assent "to, about the baboons who have 
i rach a love for women that they will attack a village when they 
I know the men are engaged in their rice-harvest, assail the poor 
i leserted wives in a body, force them into the woods, keep the n 



384 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

there against their wills, and kill them when refractory ! In justice 
to him let us add, however, that when of the same class of] 
imitative creatures he protests his inability to see why monkeys 
should not be able to conduct debates and deliberations in quite 
as orderly a manner as any civilised human assembly, his remark] 
has probably more of purposed sarcasm than of undesigned absurd- 
ity in it. At this very period his friend Burke was subjected' 
nightly to interruptions in the House of Commons that really would 
have been discreditable to an assembly of apes. 

But leaving him to the amusing mistakes and simple enjoyments 
in natural history which occupied him in his country home, inci- 
dents which attended the publication of his English History must now 
be named before these country labours and relaxations are resumed. 



CHAPTER XI. 



COUNTRY LABOURS AND RELAXATIONS. 1771. 

A more innocent production than the English History, which 
appeared in August, could hardly have been imagined. It 
jp, ,'a was simply a compilation, in his easy flowing style, from 
four historians whom he impartially characterised in his 
preface ; and with as little of the feeling of being influenced by 
any, his book throughout had been written. "They have each," 
he says, speaking of Rapin, Carte, Smollett, and Hume, "their 
"peculiar admirers, in proportion as the reader is studious of 
' ' political antiquities, fond of minute anecdote, a warm partizan, 
"or a deliberate reasoner." Nevertheless, passages of very harm- 
less narrative were displayed in the party papers as of very ques- 
tionable tendency ; he was asked if he meant to be the tool of & 
minister, as well as the drudge of a bookseller ; he was reminded 
that the favour of a generous public (so generous always at other 
people's cost), was better than the best of pensions ; and he finally 
was warned against betraying his country ' ' for base and scandalous 
" pay." The poor publisher became alarmed, and a formal defence 
of the book appeared in the Public Advertiser. Tom was himself 
a critic, and had taken the field full-armed for his friend (and his 
property). " Have you seen,' 1 he says in a letter to Granger, 
' ' impartial account of Goldsmith's History of England ? If yo 
"want to know who was the writer of it, you will find him i 
" Russell-street : but Mum !" 

Meanwhile, indifferent enough to this blustering reception 



chap, xi.] COUNTRY LABOURS AND RELAXATIONS. 385 

vouchsafed to his very innocent book, Goldsmith had returned to 
his country lodging, had been steadily working at his new labour, 
had now nearly finished his comedy, and was too quiet and busy 
in his retirement to be much disturbed by those violent party 
noises elsewhere. The farm-house still stands on a gentle eminence 
in what is called Hyde-lane, leading to Kenton, about three hundred 
yards from the village of Hyde, and looking over a pretty country 
in the direction of Hendon ; and when a biographer of the poet 
went in search of it some years since, he found still living in the 
neighbourhood the son of the farmer (a Mr. Selby) with whom the 
ipoet lodged, and in whose family the property of the house and 
I farm remained. He found traditions of Goldsmith surviving, too : 
■ how he used now and then to wander into the kitchen from his 
own room, in fits of study or abstraction, and the parlour had to 
be given up to him when he had visitors to tea ; how Reynolds 
and Johnson and Sir William Chambers had been entertained 
there, and he had once taken the young folks of the farm in a 
coach to see some strolling players at Hendon ; how he had come 
home one night without his shoes, having left them stuck fast in a 
slough ; and how he had an evil habit of reading in bed, and of 
putting out his candle by flinging his slipper at it. It is certain 
he was fond of this humble place. He told Johnson and Boswell 
that he believed the farmer's family thought him an odd character, 
and that he was to them what The Spectator appeared to his land- 
Lady and her children. He was The Gentleman. And so content 
for the present was he to continue here, that he had given up a 
.summer visit into Lincolnshire, proposed in company with Reynolds, 
to see their friend Langton in his new character of Benedict. The 
Latter had married, the previous year, one of those three Countess 
Dowagers of Rothes who had all of them the fortune to get second 
'j husbands at about the same time ; and to "Bennet Langton, Esq., 
("at Langton, near Spilsby, in Lincolnshire," it seems to have been 
[Goldsmith's first business to write on his return to his chambers in 
the Temple. The pleasant letter has happily been preserved, and 
r is dated from Brick-court, on the seventh of September. 

| My dear Sir, Since I had the pleasure of seeing you last, _ I have been 
Jilmost wholly in the country at a farmer's house, quite alone, trying to write a 
; ;omedy. It is now finished, but wben or how it will be acted, or whether it will 
' 3e acted at all, are questions I cannot resolve. I am therefore so much em- 
' jloyed upon that, that I am under the necessity of putting off my intended visit to 
; Lincolnshire for this season. Reynolds is just returned from Paris, and finds 
,iimself now in the case of a truant that must make up for his idle time by 
j iiligence. We have therefore agreed to postpone our journey till next summer, 

ivhen we hope to have the honour of waiting upon Lady Rothes, and you, and 
' staying double the time of our late intended visit. We often meet, and never 
I vithout remembering you. I see Mr. Beauclerc very often both in town and 

:ountry. He is now going directly forward to become a second Boyle : deep in 



3S6 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book it. i 

chemistry and physics. Johnson has "been down upon a visit to a country 
parson, Dr. Taylor : and is returned to his old haunts at Mrs. Thrale's. 
Burke is a fanner, en attendant a better place; hut visiting about too. \ 
Every soul is a visiting about and merry hut myself. And that is hard too, as < 
I have heen trying these three months to do something to make people laugh. 
There have I been strolling ahout the hedges, studying jests with a most 
tragical countenance. The Natural History is ahout half finished, and I will 
shortly finish the rest. God knows I am tired of this kind of finishing, which I 
is hut bungling work ; and that not so much my fault as the fault of my 
scurvy circumstances. They hegin to talk in town of the Opposition's gaining 
ground ; the cry of liberty is still as loud as ever. I have published, or 
Davies has published for me, an Abridgement of the History of England, for 
which I have heen a good deal ahused in the newspapers for hetraying the 
liberties of the people. God knows I had no thought for or against liberty in 
my head ; my whole aim being to make up a hook of a decent size, that, as 
'Squire Richard says, would do no harm to nohody. However, they set me 
down as an arrant Tory, and consequently an honest man. When you come to 
look at any part of it, you'll say tbat I am a sour Whig. God bless you, and 
with my most respectful compliments to her ladyship, I remain, dear Sir, 
your most affectionate humble servant, Oliver Goldsmith. 

Though the Langton visit had been thus deferred, however, 
another new married couple claimed him soon after this letter ; 
and he could not, amid all his " scurvy circumstances," resist the 
temptation. Little Comedy had become Mrs. Bunbury, and he 
was asked to visit them at Barton. But his means were insufficient; 
and, for a time to anticipate them, he laid himself under fresh 
obligations to Francis JSTewbery. Former money transactions 
between them, involving unfulfilled engagements for a new story, 
remained still uncancelled ; and Garrick still held an outstanding 
note of Newbery's, unpaid because of disputed claims on behalf of 
the elder Newbery's estate : but a better understanding between 
the publisher and his creditor, on the faith of certain completed 
chapters of the long-promised tale, had now arisen, and Garrick 
was in no humour to disturb it by reviving any claim of his. 
Recent courtesies and kindness had been heartily interchanged 
between the poet and the actor, and showed how little on either 
side was at any time needed to have made these celebrated men 
fast friends. In the last three years they had met more frequently 
than at any previous time, at Mr. Beauclerc's, Lord Clare's, and" 
Sir Joshua's ; and where there is anything to suggest mutual 
esteem, the more men know of each other the more they will wish 
to know. Thus, courtesies and good-nature had freely passed 
between them ; and hints of promise and acceptance for a new 
comedy would appear to have been also interchanged, for we find 
Hoadly warning Garrick soon after against "giving in" t<|i 
Doctor Goldsmith's ridicidosity. What was lately written in the 
country (little better than a rough draught at present, it is proba- 
ble) is for Covent-garden ; but he thinks he has so far succeeded 



chap, xi.] COUNTRY LABOURS AND RELAXATIONS. 387 

as to feel yet greater confidence in the same direction, and some- 
thing of an understanding for a future dramatic venture at 
Drury-lane seems certainly to have been agreed to. A new and 
strong link between them was supplied by the family which Gold- 
smith is about to visit; for Garrick was Bunbury's most familiar 
friend, and a leader in all the sports at Barton. 

What Goldsmith's ways and habits used to be there, a survivor 
of that happy circle lived to be still talking about not many years 
ago. " Come now let us play the fool a little," was his ordinary 
invitation to mirth ; and he took part in every social game. Tricks 
were played upon his dress, upon his smart black silk coat and 
expensive pair of ruffles, above all upon his wig, which the valets 
as well as the guests at Barton appear to have thought a quizzical 
property ; yet all this he suffered with imperturbable good humour. 

j He sung comic songs with great taste and fun ; he was inventive 

j in garden buildings and operations, over which he blundered 
amazingly ; and if there was a piece of water in any part of the 
grounds, he commonly managed to tumble into it. Such were 

j the recollections of those days ; with the not unimportant addition, 

j that everybody in that circle respected, admired, and loved him. 

. His fondness for flowers was a passion, which he was left to indulge 

j without restraint ; here, at Lord Clare's, at Bennet Langton's, 
and at Beauclerc's. Thus, when Beau has to tell Lord Charlemont 
a couple of years hence, that if he won't come to London the club 
shall be sent to Ireland to drive him out of that country in self- 
defence, the terrors of his threat are, that Johnson shall spoil his 

j books, Goldsmith pull his flowers, and (for a quite intolerable 
climax) Boswell ta ] k to him I But most at the card-table does 
Goldsmith seem to have spread contagious mirth : affecting nothing 
of the rigour of the game (whether it was loo or any other), playing 
in wild defiance of the chances, laughing at all advice, staking pre- 
posterously, and losing always as much as the moderate poo], could 
absorb. With fascinating pleasantry he has himself described all this, 

, in answer to one of Mrs. Bunbury's invitations to Barton, wherein 
she had playfully counselled him to come to their Christmas party 

; in his smart spring velvet coat, to bring a wig that he might dance 

with the haymakers in, and above all to follow her and her sister's 

advice in playing loo. His reply, perhaps the most amusing and 

characteristic of all his letters, was published ten years ago by Sir 

fHenry Bunbury. Between the mock gravity of its beginning and 

" the farcical broad mirth of its close, flash forth the finest humour, 
the nicest compliments, and the most sprightly touches of character. 

Madam, I read your letter with all that allowance which critical candour 
[ could require, but after all find so much to object to, and so much to raise 
my indignation, that I cannot help giving it a serious answer. 

B 2 



388 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv 

I am not so ignorant, Madam, as not to see there are many sarcasms con- 
tained in it, and solecisms also. (Solecisms is a word that comes from the 
town of Soleis in Attica, among the Greeks, built by Solon, and applied as 
we use the word Kidderminster for curtains from a town also of that name, — 
but this is learning you have no taste for !) — I say, Madam, there are many 
sarcasms in it, and solecisms also. But not to seem an ill-natured critic, I'll 
take leave to quote your own words, and give you my remarks upon them as 
they occur. You begin as follows : 

1 1 hope my good Doctor, you soon will be here, 
And your spring-velvet coat very smart will appear, 
To open our ball the first day of the year.' 

Pray, Madam, where did you ever find the epithet 'good,' applied to the 
title of Doctor? Had you called me 'learned Doctor,' or 'grave Doctor,' or 
' noble Doctor,' it might be allowable, because they belong to the profession. 
But, not to cavil at trifles, you talk of my ' spring-velvet coat,' and advise me 
to wear it the first day in the year, that is, in the middle of winter ! — a spring 
velvet coat in the middle of winter ! ! ! That would be a solecism indeed ! and 
yet to increase the inconsistence, in another part of your letter you call me a 
beau. Now, on one side or other, you must be wrong. If I am a beau, I can 
never th ink of wearing a spring-velvet in winter : and if I am not a beau, why 
then, that explains itself. But let me go on to your two next strange lines : 



' And bring with you a wig, that is modish and gay, 
To dance with the girls that are makers of hay.' 



The absurdity of making hay at Christmas you yourself seem sensible of : 
you say your sister will laugh ; and so indeed she well may ! The Latins have 
an expression for a contemptuous kind of laughter, ' naso contemnere adunco ; ' 
that is, to laugh with a crooked nose. She may laugh at you in the manner of 
the antients if she thinks fit. But now I come to the most extraordinary of all 
extraordinary propositions, which is, to take your and your sister's advice in 
playing at loo. The presumption of the offer raises my indignation beyond the 
bounds of prose ; it inspires me at once with verse and resentment. I take 
advice ! and from whom ? You shall hear. 

First let me suppose, what may shortly be true, 

The company set, and the word to be, Loo : 

All smirking, and pleasant, and big with adventure, 

And ogling the stake which is fix'd in the centre. 

Round and round go the cards, while I inwardly damn 

At never once finding a visit from Pam. 

I lay down my stake, apparently cool, 

While the harpies about me all pocket the pool. 

I fret in my gizzard, yet, cautious and sly, 

I wish all my friends may be bolder than I : 

Yet still they sit snugg, not a creature will aim 

By losing their money to venture at fame. 

'Tis in vain that at niggardly caution I scold, 

'Tis in vain that I flatter the brave and the bold : 

All play their own way, and they think me an ass, — 

' What does Mrs. Bunbury ? ' — 'I, Sir ? I pass.' 

• Pray what does Miss Horneck ? take courage, come do,' — 

' Who, I ? let me see, Sir, why I must pass too. 

Mr .Bunbury frets, and I fret like the devil, 

To see them so cowardly, lucky, and civil. 



chap. xi. J COUNTRY LABOURS AND RELAXATIONS. 389 

Yet still I sit snugg, and continue to sigh on, 

'Till, made by my losses as bold as a lion, 

I venture at all, — while my avarice regards 

The whole pool as my own — 'Come give me five cards.' 
'Well done ! ' cry the ladies ; 'Ah, Doctor, that's good ! 
' The pool's very rich, — ah ! the Doctor is loo'd.' 

Thus foil'd in my courage, on all sides perplext, 

I ask for advice from the lady that's next : 

' Pray, Ma'am, be so good as to give your advice ; 
'Don't you think the best way is to venture for't twice ?' 
'I advise,' cries the lady, 'to try it, I own. — 
' Ah ! the Doctor is loo'd ! Come, Doctor, put down.' 

Thus, playing, and playing, I still grow more eager, 

And so bold, and so bold, I'm at last a bold beggar. 

Now, ladies, I ask, if law-matters you're skilled in, 

Whether crimes such as yours should not come before Fielding : 

For giving advice that is not worth a straw, 

May well be call'd picking of pockets in law ; 

And picking of pockets, with which I now charge ye, 

Is, by quinto Elizabeth, Death without Clergy. 

What justice, when both to the Old Bailey brought ! 

By the gods, I'll enjoy it, tho' 'tis but in thought ! 

Both are plac'd at the bar, with all proper decorum, 

With bunches of fennell, and nosegays before 'em ; 

Both cover their faces with mobs and all that, 

But the judge bids them, angrily, take off their hat. 

When uncover' d, a buzz of inquiry runs round, — 

' Pray what are their crimes V — ' They've been pilfering found.' 

'But, pray, who have they pilfer' d V — ' A Doctor, I hear.' 

' What, yon solemn-faced, odd-looking man that stands near ! ' 

' The same.' — ' What a pity ! how does it surprise one, 

' Two handsomer culprits I never set eyes on ! ' 

Then their friends all come round me with cringing and leering, 

To melt me to pity, and soften my swearing. 

First Sir Charles advances with phrases well-strung, 

' Consider, dear Doctor, the girls are but young.' 

'The younger the worse,' I return him again, 

' It shews that their habits are all dyed in grain.' 

'But then they're so handsome, one's bosom it grieves.' 

' What signifies handsome, when people are thieves ? ' 

'But where is your justice ? their cases are hard.' 

' What signifies justice ? I want the reward. 

' There's the parish of Edmonton offers forty pounds ; there's the parish uf 
'St. Leonard Shoreditch offers forty pounds ; there's the parish of Tyburn, 
'from the Hog-in-the-pound to St. Giles's watch-house, offers forty pounds, I 
'shall have all that if I convict them ! ' — 

' But consider their case, — it may yet be your own ! 

' And see how they kneel ? Is your heart made of stone ? ' 

This moves : — so at last I agree to relent, 

For ten pounds in hand, and ten pounds to be spent. 

I challenge you all to answer this : I tell you, you cannot. It cuts deep ;— 
but now for the rest of the letter : and next— but I want room— so I believe 1 
shall battle the rest out at Barton some day next week. 

I don't value you all ! 0. (x. 



390 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 



CHAPTEK XIL 






FAME ACQUIRED AND TASKWORK RESUMED. 1772. 



To battle it out on any kind of challenge at Barton was to 
Goldsmith always a pleasure ; but it was a hard and 
™. ' 1\ difficult game to battle it out in London, and the stakes 
' were growing somewhat desperate. Francis Newbery seems 
in some shape to have revived the question of their old accounts, 
on his return from the last visit at Mr. Bunbury's ; and he appears 
in that publisher's books as having paid twenty pounds, a new and 
arduous character. But he wears a cheerful face still ; has his grave 
kind word for the poor struggling adventurer, his gay sprightly 
prologue for the ambitious amateur author, and still, as of old, 
^discriminate help for any one who presents himself with a 
plausible petition, all the surer of acceptance if graced with a 
brogue. A poor Irish youth afterwards known as a physician, 
Doctor M'Veagh M'Donnell, told in after life how he had flung 
himself in despair on a seat in the Temple-gardens, eyeing the 
water wistfully, when a kind genial-faced countryman, whom he 
was soon to know as the famous Goldsmith, came up to him, 
talked him into good spirits, brought him into his chambers, told 
him that in London " nothing could be got for nothing but much 
" might be got for work," and set him afloat in the world by giving 
him chapters of Bufibn to translate. This poor client used to 
grieve, when in the course of this daily labour he saw his patron 
subject to frequent fits of depression ; when he saw printers 
and booksellers "hunting " him down ; and tells us that he cried 
bitterly, and a blank came over his heart, when he afterwards 
heard of his death. Unluckily the patron was not always so 
fortunate in the objects of his bounty. 

The anecdote now to be related was told soon after Goldsmith's 
death by one of his friends, who, while remarking that a great point 
of pride with him was to be liberal to his poor countrymen who 
applied to him in distress, interposes that the expression "pride" 
was not an improper one to use, because he did it with some degree 
of ostentation. The instance is then given of a highly ingenious 
youth who had preyed upon his celebrated countryman for some 
time in this way, representing his unappreciated abilities, which it 
never occurred to Goldsmith to doubt, and his sore necessities, which 
he was always willing to relieve. At last, however, this had been 



chap, xii.] FAME ACQUIRED AND TASKWORK RESUMED. 391 

repeated so often, that it occurred to Goldsmith to give his young 
friend the chance (he so ardently professed to desire) of making 
some return for what he received, by the exercise of those literary 
talents for which he had hitherto failed to get any direct outlet 
of his own. At the particular time a bookseller had asked Gold- 
smith to draw up, for some occasional purpose, "and at a price 
"he despised but had not rejected," a description of China; and 
on this description of China he set his pensioner to work. The 
original teller of the anecdote will relate, in simple but expressive 
language, the result and its catastrophe. " Such was the idle 
" carelessness of his temper that he never gave himself the trouble 
"to read the manuscript, but sent to the press an account which 
"made the Emperor of China a Mahometan, and which supposed 
" India to be between China and Japan. Two sheets were 
"cancelled at Goldsmith's expense, who kicked his newly created 
" author down stairs." 

Another similar case had a graver issue. An Irish youth 
named Griffin, one of the many Roman Catholic lads of that day 
driven over to France for the education then denied them in their 
own land, and thus exposed to temptations at too early an age for 
effective resistance, had come back to London with the wants and 
resources of a desperate adventurer. He assailed at once both 
Garrick and Goldsmith, shrewdly sending the actor a poetical 
address of the most extravagant praise, while he wrote letters to 
the poet pointing out the most affecting distress, and implored his 
intercession with Garrick to obtain him relief. ' ' The writer of 
"this," says the author of the first memoir, "who hath perused 
"both the verses and the letters, saw no attempt to flatter 
" Goldsmith, or to interest him otherwise than through his com- 
" passion." No stronger motive could at any time be given. In 
this case it not only procured the applicant what he sought, but 
such recommendations also as obtained him the place of teacher 
in a school, where unhappily he had not remained long before he 
'robbed the house and made his escape. 

Yet the clients were not always of this class. A livelier peti- 
tioner, whose claim was for the less substantial and more poetical help 
of a prologue, and who is now duly to be presented, was a young 
man of fortune named Cradock, living in Leicestershire, who, 
bringing up with him his wife and a translation of one of 
Voltaire's tragedies, had come lately to London, very eager about 
plays and players, — being a clever amateur actor as well as writer, 
liking to be called little Cradock, and really fancying himself, one 
would say, quite a private little Garrick, — and with introductions 
to the celebrated people. Goldsmith met him at Yates the actor's 
house ; their mutual knowledge of Lord Clare soon put them on 



392 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

familiar terms ; and a prologue for Zobeide was readily promised. 
" Mr. Goldsmith," says the note with which he soon after forwar- 
ded it (Cradock was staying at Gosfield at the time), " presents his 
"best respects to Mr. Cradock ; has sent him the Prologue such 
"as it is. He cannot take time to make it better. He begs he 
" will give Mr. Yates the proper instructions ; and so, even so, he 
" commits him to fortune and the public." He had himself 
dropped the title of Doctor at this time, says one of his friends, 
but the world would not let him lose it. The prologue, very 
wittily built on the voyage to Otaheite which was making Lieute- 
nant Cook somewhat famous just now, was spoken, not by Yates, 
but by Quick, in the character of a sailor. 

The influence of Lord Clare is also to be detected in the next 
poetical product of his pen. This was a Lament for the death of 
the Princess-dowager of Wales, Robert Nugent's old political 
mistress and patron, who died in February 1772 ; before the close 
of which month Goldsmith's poem, with a title copied from 
Dry den, the Threnodia Augustalis i announced in the papers to be 
"written for the purpose, by a gentleman of acknowledged 
" literary merit," was recited and sung with appropriate music at 
Mrs. Cornely's fashionable rooms in Soho-square. Cradock, 
whose theatrical accomplishments included a taste for music, appears 
to have helped him in the adaptation of the parts ; and has pub- 
lished a note from " Mr. Goldsmith" in which with best respects 
to Mr. Cradock, he says, "When he asked him to-day, he quite 
' ' forgot an engagement of above a week's standing, which has 
' ' been made purposely for him ; he feels himself quite uneasy at 
" not being permitted to have his instructions upon those parts 
" where he must necessarily be defective. He will have a 
" rehearsal on Monday," he adds (the note is dated on Sunday 
morning), ' ' when if Mr. Cradock would come, and afterwards take 
" a bit of mutton chop, it would add to his other obligations." The 
thing was hardly worth even so much trouble, for it was purely an 
occasional piece. Though not without a passage of merit here and 
there, it was written, as we learn from the advertisement prefixed 
to it, in a couple of days ; Goldsmith himself honestly calls it 
" a compilation," which it really was (containing whole lines and 
stanzas taken bodily out of Collins's Odes)., rather than " a 
" poem ; " and it did not appear with his name attached to it until 
forty years after his death. Cradock then gave it to his friend 
.Nichols, who handed it to Chalmers. His connection with its 
authorship escaped even Boswell, who, yet busier and more inqui- 
sitive than of old, came up from his Scotch practice for his annual 
London visit not a month after it was performed, more than ever 
amazed at the amount of Goldsmith's celebrity. " Sir," he said to 



chap, xii.] FAME ACQUIRED AND TASKWORK RESUMED. 



393 



Johnson somewhat later, " Goldsmith has acquired more fame 
"than all the officers last war who were not generals ! " " Why 
"sir," answered Johnson, "you will find ten thousand fit to do 
" what they did, before you find one who does what Goldsmith 
"has done. You must consider that a thing is valued according 
" to its rarity. A pebble that paves the street is in itself more 
"useful than the diamond upon a lady's finger." But this did 
not satisfy Boswell, who had now in truth a strong, secret, and to 
himself perhaps only half-confessed reason, for his very ludicrous 
jealousy and impatience. He fancied Goldsmith likely to be 
Johnson's biographer, and that was an office he coveted and 
already had selected for himself. 

For now began that series of questions, What did you do sir, 
What did you say sir, which afterwards forced from their victim 
the energetic protest : ' ' Sir, I will not be put to the question. 
"Don't you consider, sir, that these are not the manners of a 
"gentleman? I will not be baited with what and why ; what is 
" this ? what is that ? why is a cow's tail long ? why is a fox's tail 
"bushy?" In all which, notwithstanding, Bozzy persisted: for- 
getting so much more of the manners of a gentleman as even to lay 
down his knife and fork, take out his tablets, and report speeches 
in the middle of a dinner-table ; submitting to daily rebuffs, 
reproofs, and indignities ; satisfied to be played over and drenched 
by the fountain of (what he never dreams of describing by a ruder 
name than) "wit;" content not only to be called, by the object 
of his veneration, a dunce, a parasite, a coxcomb, an eavesdropper, 
and a fool, but even faithfully to report what he calls the "keen 
"sarcastic wit," the "variety of degrading images," the "rude- 
"ness," and the "ferocity," of which he was made the special 
object : bent all the more firmly upon the one design which seized 
and occupied the whole of such faculties as he possessed, and living 
in such manner to achieve it as to have made himself immortal as 
his hero. " You have but two topics, sir," exclaimed Johnson ; 
"'yourself and me. I am sick of both." Happily for us, nothing 
j could sicken Boswell of either ; and by one of the most moderately 
wise men that ever lived, the masterpiece of English biography 
was written. 

It is so, because, after every allowance made for the writer's 
failings, it is a book thoroughly honest and true to the minutest 
letter. "I besought his tenderness," says Mrs. Hannah More, a 
few months after his hero's death, "for our virtuous and most 
"revered departed friend, and begged he would mitigate some of 
"his asperities. He said roughly, He would not cut off his claws, 
"nor make a tiger a cat, to please anybody." Perhaps there is 
nothing sadder to think of in our history than the many tigers that 

S3 



394 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

figure as cats, and the many cats who trample about as tigers. 
What would we now give to have had a Bosweli for every Johnson ! 
to have had in attendance on all our immortals, as much self- 
complacent folly with as much shrewd clear insight ; the same lively 
power to do justice to their sayings, the same reverence to devote 
such talents to that humble service, and the same conceit full-proof 
against every degradation it involved. We have but to tura to 
the biography of any other man of letters, to comprehend our debt 
of gratitude to Bosweli ; we have but to remember how fruitless is 
the quest, when we would seek to stand face to face with any other 
as famous Englishman. "So, sir," said Johnson to Cibber, "I 
"find you knew Mr. Dryden V "Knew him!" said Cibber. 
" O Lord ! I was as well acquainted with him as if he had been 
"my own brother." " Then," rejoined the other, "you can tell 
"me some anecdotes of him?" "Oh yes," exclaimed Colley, "a 
"thousand ! why, we used to meet him continually at a club at 
"Will's. I remember as well as if it were but yesterday, that 
"when he came into the room in winter-time, he used to go and 
" sit close by the fire in one corner ; and that in summer-time, he 
" would always go and sit in the window." Such was the informa- 
tion Johnson got from Cibber as to the manners and habits of 
Dryden. Such, or little better, but for Bosweli, might have been 
our knowledge of Johnson. 

Early in April he dined in company with Johnson and Gold- 
smith at General Oglethorpe's, and "fired up" the brave old 
General by making a question of the moral propriety of duelling. 
"I ask you first, sir," said Goldsmith, "what would you do if 
"you were affronted?" "I answered," says Bosweli, "I should 
"think it necessary to fight." "Why then," was the reply, "that 
"solves the question." "No, sir," interposed Johnson, "it does 
" not solve the question ; " which he thereupon proceeded himself 
to solve, by regretting the superfluity of refinement which existed 
in society on the subject of affronts, and admitting that duelling 
must be tolerated so long as such notions should prevail. After 
this, — the General having meanwhile poured a little wine on 
the table, and at Johnson's request, described with a wet finger 
the siege of Belgrade, — a question was started of how far people 
who disagree in a capital point can live in friendship together. 
Johnson said they might. Goldsmith said they could not, as they 
had not the idem velle atque idem nolle, the same likings and the 
same aversions. " Why, sir," returned Johnson, " you must shuu 
" the subject as to which you disagree. For instance, I can live 
" very well with Burke : I love his knowledge, his genius, his 
" diffusion, and affluence of conversation ; but I would not talk to 
" him of the Rockingham party." " But, sir," retorted Goldsmith, 



chap, xti.] FAME ACQUIRED AND TASKWORK RESUMED. 395 

W when people live together who have something as to which they 
" disagree, and which they want to shun, they will be in the 
" situation mentioned in the story of Bluebeard ; You may look 
"into all the chambers but one. But we should have the greatest 
"inclination to look into that chamber, to talk of that subject." 
Johnson hereupon with a loud voice shouted out, ' ' Sir, I am 
"not saying that you could live in friendship with a man from 
r whom you differ as to some point ; I am only saying that I could 
" do it. You put me in mind of Sappho in Ovid." 

Goldsmith had said too clever a thing, and got punished for it. 
So it was with Percy, very often ; so with Joseph Warton ; so 
with Dean Barnard ; so with Langton ; so even with Beauclerc 
and Reynolds. What Miss Anna Seward called "the wit and 
"aweless impoliteness of the stupendous creature" bore down 
every one before it. His forcible spirit and impetuosity of manner, 
says Boswell, " may be said to spare neither sex nor age. I 
"have seen even Mrs. Thrale stunned." Yet, if we may believe 
Miss Reynolds, she never said more when she recovered, than 
Oh dear good man I And Dean Barnard, invoking the aid of his 
friends against the aweless impoliteness, and submitting himself 
to be taught \>j their better accomplishments, has told us in lively 
verse with what good humour it was borne by Reynolds. 

Dear knight of Plympton, teach me how 
To suffer with unclouded brow 

And smile serene as thine, 
The jest uncouth and truth severe ; 
Like thee to turn my deafest ear, 

And calmly drink my wine. 



If I have thoughts and can't express 'em, 
Gibbon shall teach me how to dress 'em 

In terms select and terse ; 
Jones teach me modesty and Greek, 
Smith how to think, Burke bow to speak, 

And Beauclerc to converse. 

Soon after the dinner at Oglethorpe's, Goldsmith returned to 
his Edgeware lodging, and was sometime busied with the Animated 
Nature. It was a task he best worked at in the country, with 
nature wide-spread, around him : for though a severe criticism 
may point it out as the defect of the book, that, taken as a whole, 
it has too many of the characteristics of a mere compilation, into 
which he appears disposed, as we have seen, to admit as freely the 
credulous romance of the early naturalists and travellers, as the 
scientific soberness of the great Frenchman his contemporary whose 
labours were still unfinished while he wrote, — there are yet, as I 



396 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

have lately said, with many evidences of very careful study of the 
best of the scanty authorities then extant, also many original 
passages of exquisite country observation in it ; and not a few in 
which the grace of diction, the choice of perfect and finely finished 
imagery, the charm with which a poet's fancy is seen playing 
round the graver truths of science, and an elegant clearness and 
beauty in the tone of reflection, may compare with his best original 
compositions, in poetry or prose. He did not live to see its 
reception from his contemporaries ; but when Tom Davies, who was 
in the way of hearing all kinds of opinions about it from the best 
authorities, characterises it as one of the pleasantest and most 
instructive books in the language, not only useful to young minds 
but entertaining to those who understand the subject, which the 
writer certainly did not, there is little doubt that he reflects pretty 
nearly what Johnson thought and said. He appears to be repeating 
Johnson too, when he adds that "everything of Goldsmith seems 
"to bear the magical touch of an enchanter : no man took less 
"pains, and yet produced so powerful an effect : the great beauty 
"of his composition consists in a clear, copious, and expressive 
' ' style. " All this is true to a certain extent ; but it is also very 
certain that it is not by " not taking pains " such a style can be 
ever mastered. The pains has been taken at some time or other, 
the reader may be sure, and the skill to conceal it is the secret of 
that exquisite ease. The contrast between the appearance of his 
manuscript in prose and in poetry has been already remarked in a 
previous page ; but though of course there would always be a dis- 
tinction in this respect in every writer, we must not suppose that 
the amount of correction or interlineation can be invariably taken to 
express the presence or absence of care and labour. The safer 
inference will be that in proportion as a subject has dwelt in the 
mind, and been thoroughly arranged and well digested there, it 
will flow forth clearly at last. 

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, 
As those move easiest who have learn' d to dance. 

He tells us in the preface to the Animated Nature, most 
characteristically, that his first intention was to have given a sort 
of popular translation and comment on Pliny, but that the appear- 
ance of M. Buffon's great work induced him to depart from that 
design ; "being convinced by his manner, that the best imitation 
' ' of the ancients was to write from our own feelings, and to imitate 
"nature." And for proof that he honestly did this, it might be 
enough to refer to the many personal characteristics and experiences 
I have been able to draw from the book, having lately, with 
singular and unexpected pleasure, read the whole of it with 






ohap. xii,] FAME ACQUIRED AND TASKWORK RESUMED. 397 

that view. There are bits of natural painting in it as true as 
anything in the Traveller or Deserted Village. You perceive at 
once that he is as sincerely describing what he has actually seen 
and felt, as when, in either of those charming poems, he lets you 
hear the sweet confusion of "village murmurs" in the country 
air, or shows you the beauty that the poet and lover of nature 
may see in even the flat low coasts of Holland, in "the yellow- 
"blossom'd vale, the willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail." Many 
such passages have incidentally enriched these pages ; and in others 
of more serious tone, such as the opening chapter on birds of the 
sparrow kind, or that walk by the sea shore in which his thoughts 
turn so unaffectedly to Him who is "the essence of sublimity," or 
where the change of the grub to the butterfly is accepted for "a 
" strong proof that, while this little animal is raised to its greatest 
"height, we are as yet, in this world, only candidates for per- 
fection," — may be observed another delightful feature of the 
book, in its unobtrusive manner of blending religious aspiration 
with natural description. 

Nor is there any section of it more entirely pleasing, in this 
personal view, than the whole treatment of the ornithological division 
of its subject. With manifest delight the theme inspires its writer, 
as he begins to talk of the " beautiful and loquacious race of 
" animals that embellish our forests, amuse our walks, and exclude 
" solitude from our most shady retirements . . No part of nature is 
"destitute of inhabitants. The woods, the waters, the depths of 
" the earth, have their respective tenants ; while the yielding air, 
"and those tracts of seeming space where man never can ascend, 
" are also passed through by multitudes of the most beautiful beings 
' ' of the creation. . . The return of spring is the beginning of plea- 
' ' sure. Those vital spirits which seemed locked up during the winter, 
"then begin to expand ; vegetables and insects supply abundance 
" of food ; and the bird having more than a sufficiency for its own 
" subsistence, is impelled to transfuse life as well as to maintain 
"it. Those warblings, which had been hushed during the colder 
" seasons, now begin to animate the fields ; every grove and bush 
"resounds with the challenge of anger, or the call of allurement." 
Who does not believe the reluctance with which Goldsmith describes 
himself quitting that "most beautiful part of creation. These 
" splendid inhabitants of air possess all those qualities that can soothe 
" the heart and cheer the fancy. The brightest colours, the roundest 
"forms, the most active manners, and the sweetest music. In 
" sending the imagination in pursuit of these, in following them to 
* ' the chirping grove, the screaming precipice, or the glassy deep, 
"the mind naturally lost the sense of its own situation, and, 
" attentive to their little sports, almost forgot the Task of describing 



898 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book it. 

"them. Innocently to amuse the imagination in this dream 
"of life is wisdom . . every rank and state of mankind may find 
" something to imitate in those delightful songsters, and we may 
"not only employ the time, but mend our lives by the contem- 
plation." The reader will not fail to mark a certain subdued 
sadness in this passage, and to give all the significance to that word 
Task, which it is manifest Goldsmith intended by printing it in 
capitals. Infinitely might snch extracts, fresh as the summer 
fields and sunshine, be prolonged ; and let me not omit to add 
that this intense love for all living creatures is but another 
form of his worship of nature. jSTothing inspires his indignation 
so strongly as any cruelty practised against them. His remarks 
in this section of his book, on artificial moulting, on the manner 
of training hawks, on the sadness of caged birds, simply express 
the spirit which rouses him always against every form of cruelty 
or pain. There is a touching passage on that "humble useful 
" creature," the ass, which might have been written by my uncle 
Toby himself. And who may resist the quaint kindly humour 
with which he celebrates another domestic creature equally service- 
able and equally despised 1 Winding up a laughable statement of 
the absurdities of the gander with the sly remark that " it is pro- 
" bable there is not a more respectable animal on earth — to a goose" 
he thus continues of the latter : "I feel my obligations to this 
" animal every word I write ; for, however deficient a man's head 
" may be, his pen is nimble enough upon every occasion : it is 
"happy indeed for us, that it requires no great effort to put it in 
"motion." Very touching, too, is the anecdote he relates of the 
she-fox and her cub, which " happened while I was writing this 
"history," and to which he again refers in another passage. 
And exactly the same humane feeling it is which elicits his dis- 
approval of all efforts, however ingenious or laborious, to bring 
animals "under the trammels of human education. It may," he 
admits of the animal so taught, "be an admirable object for 
" human curiosity, but is very little advanced by all its learning 
" in the road to its own felicity." Nor is his pity and sympathy 
less strongly moved for poor little human children subjected pre- 
maturely to an intellectual torture, for which their faculties are 
equally unprepared. "I have seen many a little philosophical 
" martyr whom I wished, but was unable to relieve." 

Were it but for the humanity and beauty of such passages alone, 
then, this Animated Nature must surely always be considered as 
on the whole a surprising specimen of task-work, and a most happy 
piece of imitation of nature ; allowance being made for the circum- 
stances in which its drudgery was undergone, and which the course 
his necessities now obliged him to take did not tend to relieve. 



chap, xil] FAME ACQUIRED AND TASKWORK RESUMED. 399 

"I have taxed my scanty circumstances in procuring books which 
"are on the subject of all others the most expensive," was a 
touching confession he did not scruple to make in the preface he 
did not live to see prefixed to the work. Pressed and hunted in 
other ways already by such "scanty circumstances," he now 
induced Griffin to advance him what remained to be paid upon the 
copyright ; acknowledged the receipt and executed the assignment 
in June ; and had then received and paid away the whole eight 
hundred guineas, while upwards of a third of his labour remained 
still unperformed. 

Nor was this all. He had involved himself in an undertaking 
to Newbery, to supply another tale like the Vicar of Wakefield ; 
some years had elapsed since the unredeemed promise was made ; 
and a portion of a tale submitted to the publisher had lately been 
returned with intimation of disapproval. It appears to have been 
a narrative version of the plot of the Good-natured Man, and on 
that ground objected to. So much was long remembered by Miss 
Mary Horneck, to whom, and to her sister, Goldsmith afterwards 
read such chapters as he had written ; and it may be worth stating 
in connection with this fact, which Hazlitt heard from Mrs. Gwyn 
herself in Northcote's painting room, that Southey notices in his 
Omniana a fraud he supposes to have been practised on Goldsmith's 
reputation in France, by the announcement, in a list of books • at 
the end of a volume published in the year of his death, of a 
translation from the English entitled " Histovre de Francois Wills, 
u ou le Triomphe de la Bienfaisance, par Vauteur du Ministre de 
" Wakefield" It is suggested that this may have been the incom- 
plete chapters left by Goldsmith, thought unworthy of publication 
here, concluded by some inferior hand, and sold to the French 
market ; but the account I have received of the utter commonplace 
of the English original, quite excludes the possibility of Goldsmith's 
having had anything whatever to do with it. 

Another labour that occupied Goldsmith in the Edgeware 
cottage was the abridgment of his Roman History ; and this was 
probably the time when he tried unsuccessfully to lighten his 
various toil by means of extraneous assistance. Exceptions may 
of course be stated to every rule, but it will be found, I think, 
that writers of the best style are generally the least able to find 
any relief in dictating to others. "When Doctor Goldsmith," 
says the kindly biographer of the good Jonas Han way, "to relieve 
" himself from the labour of writing, engaged an amanuensis, he 
" found himself incapable of dictation ; and after eyeing each 
" other some time, unable to proceed, the Doctor put a guinea 
"in his hand, and sent him away : but it was not so with 
" Mr. Hanway ; he could compose faster than any person could 



400 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

' ' write. " No doubt ; nor was such information as Mr. Han way 
had to contribute at all likely to be the worse for his fast compo- 
sition, whereas Goldsmith perhaps eyed his wondering amanuensis 
all the more wistfully and silently, because of a misgiving connected 
with the somewhat scant information to be then and there 
imparted. Still, of his historical task- work it is to be said quite 
as truly as of the delightful Animated Nature, that such defects 
of imperfect research as it exhibited, were counterbalanced by sim- 
plicity of diction, a lucid beauty of narration, and perfect unaffected- 
ness of style ; and that schoolboys have more profited by the one 
than lost by the other. Johnson said, as we have seen, that he 
would make a very fine natural history book, though if he could 
distinguish a cow from a horse, that he believed to be the extent 
of his scientific knowledge ; and the same will have to be said of 
his other history books, even though his general historical know- 
ledge should be measured by the anecdote of Gibbon's visit to 
him in the Temple some few months hence, when he looked up 
from the manuscript of his Grecian History which he happened to 
be writing, asked of his scholarly visitor the name of the Indian 
king who gave Alexander so much trouble, and on Gibbon face- 
tiously answering Montezuma, gravely wrote it down. 

But his ignorance in this and other respects I have shown to be 
absurdly over-stated. The purse he had so often to take out was 
not so often empty. What Johnson says may be true of the few 
last years of his life, that he was at no pains to fill his mind with 
knowledge ; that transplanting it from one place to another, it did 
not settle, and so he could not tell what was in his own books : 
but it should be limited by those years of his life, judged by the 
distractions which then beset him, and accompanied with the 
admission which Johnson did not omit, that the world had taught 
him knowledge where books had not ; that whatever he wrote, he 
did better than any other man could do ; that he well deserved 
his place in Westminster Abbey, and that every year he lived he 
would have deserved it better. It is astonishing how many 
thoughts, familiar now as household words, originated with Gold- 
smith, even to the famous saying that it was not so much to 
express as to conceal our wants that language had been given 
us ; while, loose and ill-considered as much of his philosophy 
occasionally is, his Essays and Citizen of the World contain views 
of life and economy, political and social, which for subtlety and 
truth Burke never surpassed, nor the far-seeing wisdom of Adam 
Smith himself. To that fragmentary way of writing, the resource 
of his days of poverty, his present narrow necessities seemed 
again to have driven him back : for, besides the Edgeware labours 
just named, the latest of the Essays in the collection which now 






chap, xiii.] PUPPETS AT DRURY-LANE AND ELSEWHERE. 401 

bears that title were written in the present year. They appeared 
in a new magazine, started by his acquaintance Captain (so called, 
but strictly Lieutenant) Thompson and other members of the old 
Wednesday -club : and comprised a highly humorous paper of 
imaginary Scotch marriages, for which he had stolen some sentences 
from the Landlady in the Good Natured Man ; a whimsical nar- 
rative of a noted sleep-walker ; a gracefully written notice of 
Shenstone's Leasowes, full of sympathy for the kind, thoughtful 
poet ; and a capital attack, as full of good-humour as of hard- 
hitting, on the sentimental school of comedy. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



PUPPETS AT DRURY-LANE AND ELSEWHERE. 1772. 

The resolute attack on sentimental comedy which I have traced 
to Goldsmith's hand in the new magazine, showed chiefly 
his own renewed anxieties in the direction of the stage. mJ/± 
Another successful venture there, was indeed become almost 
his only hope in the desperate distress to which he appeared to be 
verging ; yet the old fears had been interposed by Colman, on the 
old hackneyed ground. The comedy of which the first draught 
had been completed the year before, and which in the interval had 
been re-cast and strengthened, was now in the hands of the Covent- 
garden manager ; whose tedious suspended judgments made 
Goldsmith long for even Garrick's tender mercies. He had no 
present reason, indeed, to think that the Drury-lane manager would 
not have treated him with unusual consideration, if his previous 
promise had not bound him to the other house. For the recent 
good understanding between them continued, and is observable in 
many little incidents of the time. The libellers who knew 
Garrick's weakness, for example, now assailed him through the 
side of Goldsmith ; and not only was the latter accused of har- 
bouring low writers busied in abusing his new ally (which Garrick 
had sense enough to laugh at), but Kenrick accused them both of 
conspiring against himself, and taunted the Drury-lane manager 
with his new literary favourites. "My literary favourites," 
Garrick cleverly retorted, " are men of the greatest honour and 
" genius in this nation, and have all had the honour, with myself, 
" of being particularly abused by you. Your pretence of my 
" having, in conjunction with Doctor Goldsmith and others, abused 
" you in the Morning Clwonicle, I most solemnly protest is false ; 



402 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

" nay more, I never saw such abuse, or heard of it, till within j 
" this hour." That still he has his laugh against Goldsmith seems 
also obvious enough, but it is all in good humour. A little before 
this date Richard Burke was writing to him from Grenada, to 
which, after more than one ' ' absence " in London, he was again 
returned ; and after perpetrating a bad joke, which he protests he 
thinks witty, " Let Goldsmith/' he adds, " when he comes from 
" France, be the judge. I hope that he will not leave his poetry 
" there : let him bring home as many French airs as he pleases ; 
" I would have his song continue to be plain English. His poetry 
"is all I can now have a concern in ; half the convex world I 
" intrudes between me and his old or new acquired accomplish- 
" ments of any other kind." And far better would Garrick have] 
employed himself in giving Goldsmith practical proof, in connection 
with his new comedy, of the new interest in him which his 
Correspondence thus evinces, than in pursuing that luckless labour 
of management which just at this moment excluded every other. 

One of the greatest mistakes of Garrick's life was committed at 
the end of the present year. He had of late, needlessly suspecting a 
failure in his own continued powers of attraction, greatly overdone 
the ornamental part of his scenery and general management ; but 
this was a venial fault. I refer to a graver trespass on good taste 
which threw into the shade all former like transgressions. He 
had, in other years, made many foul assaults upon Shakespeare in 
the way of stage adaptation ; without scruple he had turned plays 
into operas, and comedies into farces ; he had professed to correct 
the trash of Davenant, Cibber, and Tate, with quite as sorry trash 
of his own ; he had profaned the affecting catastrophe of Romeo 
and Juliet, made a pantomime of the Midsummer Night's Bream, \ 
and given what Bishop Warburton had the bad taste to call " an 
" elegant form to that monstrous composition" the Winter's Tale ; 
but he did not achieve his master-stroke till the close of the 
year 1772, when he produced Hamlet with Alterations. This 
he very justly characterised as the most imprudent thing he 
had ever done in his life ; but having sworn, as he says, nob to 
leave the stage till he had rescued "that noble play from all the 
" rubbish of the fifth act," he had cleared off the rubbish in a 
way that M. de Voltaire himself, who doubtless suggested it, 
might have envied. The Grave-diggers were gone, Osrick was 
gone, Yorick was gone ; Hamlet had come back from England 
such a very tiger, that anybody hearing his ohs and ahs, his 
startling exclamations and furious resolves, would have taken him 
for Gibber's Richard ; — more deplorable than all, men of wit and 
knowledge were found to second this mountebank impertinence ; 
and even George Steevens (it is difficult to believe he was not 



chap, xiii.] PUPPETS AT DRURY-LANE AND ELSEWHERE,.. 403 

laughing at Garrick, as he laughed at everybody) recommended 
that the omissions should be thrown into a farce, to be acted 
immediately after the tragedy. But though the stage was de- 
graded by this absurdity for eight years, its author never dared to 
print it, for " it was greatly disliked by the million," says Mr. 
Victor the prompter, " who love Shakespeare with all his glorious 
" absurdities, and will not suffer a bold intruder to cut him up." 
Not long before, Foote had proposed a parody on the Stratford 
Ode, in which a fellow to represent the nation should do homage 
to Garrick, reverentially repeating, " A nation's taste depends on 
i you, perhaps a nation's virtue too ; " to which Garrick should 
graciously answer, "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" Hamlet with Alterations 
now justified Foote' s witty malice ; and its author had better 
never have gone to France, or heard the name of Voltaire. 

France had also this year, in Burke, a visitor from a more real 
stage ; yet who brought back such visions of the court he had 
seen at Versailles, and of the young dauphiness Marie Antoinette, 
as might better have become one of Garrick' s enchanted palaces 
than that hideous mockery of the Trianon. He saw little but an 
age of chivalry extant still, where something should have been 
visible to him of an age of starvation and retribution ; and, 
through the glittering formal state that surrounded the pomp of 
Louis the well-beloved, not a shadow of the antic Hunger, mocking 
the state and grinning at the pomp, would seem to have revealed 
itself to Edmund Burke. " Beautiful," says Carlyle, in his 
immortal History, "beautiful if seen from afar, resplendent like a 
" sun ; seen near at hand, a mere sun's atmosphere, hiding dark- 
"ness, confused ferment of ruin ! " Sixteen years earlier, Gold- 
smith had seen it near at hand ; and now he and Burke were together 
on his friend's return, and together visited an exhibition in the 
Haymarkefc which had in it about as much reality as that Versailles 
show. This was The Puppets in Panton-street. Great was the cele- 
brity of these small, well-pulled, ingenious performers ; for nobody 
could detect the wires. Burke praised the dexterity of one puppet 
in particular, who tossed a pike with military precision ; and 
" Psha ! " remarked Goldsmith with some warmth, " I can do it 
"better myself." Boswell would have us believe that he was 
seriously jealous of the so famous fantoccini ! "He went home with 
" Mr. Burke to supper, and broke his shin by attempting to exhibit 
" to the company how much better he could jump over a stick than 
" the puppets." The anecdote is too pleasant to be gravely objected 
to ; but might he not only mean that the puppets jumped even 
worse than he did ? The actual world and the puppet-show are 
moreover so much alike, that what was meant for a laugh at the 
world might easily have passed for an attack on the puppet-show. 



404 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

And here it will perhaps be worth adding, that from one who, 
in the larger of the two theatres, and with notable reference to 
those very pnppets of Versailles, was afterwards doomed to be 
busy in both pulling and snapping the strings, Goldsmith received 
this same year a quite voluntary tribute to his fame. A correspondent 
"in the humble station of an officer of excise," sent bim a 
pamphlet-memorial of the case of his brother officers ; told him 
that the literary fame of Doctor Goldsmith (whom he addresses 
Honoured Sir) had induced him to present it ; said that he had 
some few questions to trouble Doctor Goldsmith with, and should 
esteem his company for an hour or two, to partake of a bottle 
of wine or anything else, as a singular favour ; and added that 
the Doctor's unknown humble servant, and admirer, would take 
the liberty of waiting on him in a day or two. The writer was 
Thomas Paine, whom this pamphlet on the excise introduced to 
Franklin, whom Franklin within twelve months sent to America, 
who transacted memorable business in the establishment of a 
republic there, and who became subsequently citizen of another as 
famous republic, and deputy in its National Convention for the 
department of Calais. 

Goldsmith had suffered severe illness in the summer from a 
disease (strangury) induced by sedentary habit ; on its return in 
the autumn, had obtained such relief from the fashionable fever- 
medicine of the day, as to become almost as great a bigot as 
Horace Walpole to the miraculous powers of James's powders ; 
and now, after visits to Mr. Cradock, Lord Clare, and Mr. 
Langton, was settled for the winter in London. I trace him to'.| 
Covent-garden theatre with George Steevens on an occasion so 
special, — it was to see Macklin, now nearly eighty years of age, 
perform the part of Iago, — that they had prevailed upon Johnson to 
accompany them. This was the winter, I should add, when 
JSTorthcote became Reynolds's pupil, and he remembered none of 
the Leicester-square visitors of the time so vividly as Goldsmith. 
He had expressed great eagerness to see him ; soon afterwards the 
poet came to dine ; and " This is Doctor Goldsmith," said Sir . 
Joshua, " pray why did you wish to see him 1 " Confused by the 
suddenness of the question, which was put with designed abrupt- 
ness, the youth could only stammer out " Because he is a notable 
"man;" whereupon, the word in its ordinary sense appearing 
very oddly misapplied, both Goldsmith and Reynolds burst out 
laughing, and the latter protested that in future his friend should 
always be the notable man. Northcote explains that he meant to 
say he was a man of note, or eminence ; and adds that he was 
very unaffected and good-natured, but seemed totally ignorant of 
the art of painting, and indeed often with great gaiety confessed 









jhap. xin.] PUPPETS AT DRURY-LANE AND ELSEWHERE. 405 

is much. Nevertheless, he used at Burke's table to plunge into 
art-discussions with Barry, when the latter returned from abroad 
she year following this ; and would punish Barry's dislike of Sir 
: Joshua, manifested even thus early, by disputing openly the 
■ subtlest dogmas with that irritable genius, or perhaps by laughing 
secretly as he put in practice a strict adherence to the two rules 
i which formed George Primrose's qualification for setting up as 
cognoscento : " The one always to observe, the picture might 
;"have been better if the painter had taken more pains ; and 
i "the other, to praise the works of Pietro Perugino." (Lord Byron 
delighted in the truth and wit of these rules, and often repeated 
them to Mr. Rogers in Italy.) "With Burke himself, ISTorthcote 
says, he overheard Goldsmith sharply disputing one day in Sir 
Joshua's painting-room about the character of the King ; when, 
so grateful was he for some recent patronage of his comedy (it 
was a few months after the present date), and so outrageous and 
unsparing was Burke's anti-monarchical invective, that, unable 
any longer to endure it, he took up his hat and left the room. 

Another argument which JSTorthcote overheard at Sir Joshua's 
dinner-table, was between Johnson and Goldsmith ; when the 
latter put Venice Preserved next to Shakespeare for its merit as 
an acting play, and was loudly contradicted by the other. 
" Pooh ! " roared Johnson. " There are not forty decent lines 
9 in the whole of it. What stuff are these ! " And then he quoted 
as prose, Pierre's scornful reproach to the womanish Jamer. 
" What feminine tales hast thou been listening to, of unair'd 
" shirts, catarrhs, and tooth-ache, got by thin-soled shoes V To 
which the unconvinced disputant sturdily replied, " True ! To be 
1 v sure ! That is very like Shakespeare." Goldsmith certainly had 
no great knowledge of the higher secrets of criticism, and was guilty 
of very monstrous and very silly heresies against the master-poet (as 
in his paper on Metaphor in the Essays) ; but here his notion was 
right enough. He meant to say that Shakespeare had the art 
possessed only by the greatest poets, of placing in natural con- 
nection the extremes of the familiar and imaginative : which 
Garrick would have done well to remember before he began to 
botch Samlet. Another impression which remained with North- 
cote's old age, derived from these scenes of his youth, was that the 
I set " at Sir Joshua's were somewhat intolerant of such as did not 
belong to their party, jealous of enlarging it, and chary of 
admitting merit to any new comer. Thus he remembered a new 
poem coming out that was sent to Reynolds, who had instructed 
his servant Ralph to bring it in after dinner : when presently 
Goldsmith laid hold of it, fell into a rage with it before he had 
read a dozen lines, and exclaiming, " what wretched stuff is here ! 



406 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book 

"what cursed nonsense that is I" kept all the while cutting 
every line almost through the paper with his thumb nail. " Nay 
"nay," said Sir Joshua, snatching the volume, " don't do so : yoi 
"shall not spoil my book, neither." In like manner, Northcotf 
adds, he recollects their making a dead set at Cumberland. Thej 
never admitted him as one of themselves ; they excluded him fron 
the club ; Reynolds never asked him to dinner ; and from anjl 
room where he was, Goldsmith would have flung out as if a dragoij 
had been there. It was not till his life was just about to close 
that he became tolerant of the condescending attentions of the 
fretful Cumberland. 

To these recollections of Northcote, some by Mr. Cradock maji 
be added. When it was proposed one day to go down to LichfieldJ 
and, in honour of Johnson and Garrick, act the Beaux Stratagem 
among themselves there, all the famous people of the club takind 
part in it, "then," exclaimed Goldsmith, "I shall certainly play 
"Scrub. I should like of all things to try my hand at that 
" character." One would have liked no less to have seen him play^ 
it, and heard the roar that would have given a personal turn to thd 
cunning serving-man's famous assertion, " I believe they talked of 
" me, for they laughed consumedly." But his brogue would have been] 
a difficulty. Even Burke's brogue was no small disadvantage to him ; 
and Goldsmith had hardly improved his, since those Dunciad-days 
when he would object to the exquisite bad rhyming of key with be 
(" let key be called kee, and then it will rhyme with fee," said one 
of his criticisms for Griffiths, "but not otherwise"): indeed, says 
Cooke, he rather cultivated his brogue than got rid of it. Malone'si 
authority would have us doubt, too, whether his emphasis, even for 1 
Scrub, would always have been right ; seeing that, being at dinner 
one day with him and Johnson, he gave an example to prove that! 
poets ought to read and pronounce verse with more accuracy and i 
spirit than other men, by beginning the ballad At Upton on the 
Sill with a most emphatic on. Farquhar's humour, nevertheless, 
might have gained as much as it lost ; and the private play could 
not have spared such an actor. Soon after this, Richard Burke r 
reinforced the party with his wit and his whim, — Garrick having 
succeeded, where Edmund supposed that his own influence had 
failed, in getting from Lord North another year's leave of absence 
from Grenada, — and his return led to the establishment of a 
temporary dining-club at the St. James's coffee-house, the limited 
numbers of the Gerrard-street club excluding both him and Garrick 
from present membership there. Cumberland, who became after- 
wards an occasional guest, correctly attributes its origin to Burke, 
though he misstates everything else connected with it : and here 
Cradock, mistaking it for the club, remembered to have heard much 



,chap. xiii.] PUPPETS AT DRURY-LANE AND ELSEWHERE. 407 

animated talk in which Richard Burke made himself very- 
prominent, and seemed the most free and easy of the company. 
Its members, who had the privilege of introducing strangers to 
their meetings, used to dine at each other's houses also, less 
frequently ; and Goldsmith indulged himself now and then in very 
oddly assorted assemblages at his chambers after the dinner, 
which, in allusion to the fashionable ball-rooms of the day, he 
called his " little Cornelys." 

More rarely, at meetings that became afterwards more famous, 
] the titled people who jostled against writers and artists at Shel- 
; burne-house in Berkeley-square might be seen wondering or 
! smiling at the simple-looking Irishman who had written the 
; Deserted Village. There were Mrs. Vesey's parties, too, more 
choice and select than Mrs. Montagu's, her friend and imitator ; 
and at both we have traces of Goldsmith — " your wild genius," as 
Mrs. Yesey's statelier friend Mrs. Carter calls him. These ladies 
had got the notion of their blue-stocking routs from the Du Duf- 
| fands, and L'Espinasses, at the last French peace ; but alas ! the 
Montesquieus, Yoltaires, and Du Chatelets, the De Launays, 
Hainaults, De Choiseuls, and Condorcets, were not always forth- 
coming in Hill-street or Portman-square. In truth they seem to 
have been dull enough, those much- talked about re-unions ; though 
sometimes enlivened by Mrs. Vesey's forgetfulness of her own 
name, and sparkling at all times with Mrs. Montagu's diamonds 
and bows. Mrs. Thrale's were better ; and though the lively little 
lady made a favourite jest of Goldsmith's simple ways, he passed 
i happy days with Johnson both in South wark and Streatham. 

Still, perhaps, his happiest time was when he had Johnson to 
himself ; when there were no listeners to talk for ; when to his 
half-childish frolicking absurdities, Johnson lowered all that was 
predominant or intolerant in his great fine nature ; and together 
• they came sporting from Gerrard-street to the Temple, or, when 
the club did not meet, had supper by themselves at an adjoining 
tavern in Soho. This was that once famous Jack's, since Walker's, 
in Dean-street, kept by a singer of Garrick's company (Jack 
Roberts), and patronised by Garrick and his friends, which, in all 
but the life that departed from it when thetj departed, to this day 
exists unchanged ; quite unvexed by disturbance or improve- 
ment ; haunted by the ghosts of guests that are gone, but not 
much visited by guests that live ; a venerable relic of the still life 
of Goldsmith's age possessed by an owner who is venerable as 
itself, and whose memory, faithful to the past, now lives altogether 
with the shades that inhabit there. (That was written in 1848. 
It now, in 1855, exists no longer ; the venerable Walker having 
become himself a shadow.) Of many pleasant "tete-a-tete suppers " 



408 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

this was the scene ; and here Goldsmith would seem boldly to 
have perpetrated very ancient sallies of wit, to half-grumbling half- 
laughing accompaniment from Johnson. " Sir," said the sage one 
night, as they supped off rumps and kidneys, " these rumps are 
" pretty little things ; but then a man must eafc a great many of 
" them before he fills his belly." " Aye, but how many of them," 
asked Goldsmith innocently, "would reach to the moon ?" "To 
" the moon ! " laughed Johnson ; " ah, Goldy, I fear that exceeds 
" your calculation." "Not at all, sir," says Goldsmith, "I think 
" I could tell." "Pray then, sir," says the other, " let us hear." 
" Why," and here Goldsmith instinctively, no doubt, got as far 
from Johnson as he could, " one, if it were long enough." " Well, 
" sir, I have deserved it," growled the philosopher. " I should not 
i ' have provoked so foolish an answer by so foolish a question. " 

But Goldsmith's mirth is from a heart now ill at ease. Every 
day's uncertainty as to his comedy is become fraught with serious 
consequence to him, and Colman still delays his answer. The 
recollection of former mortifications no doubt sadly recurred, and 
with it came back the old distrusts and bitter self-misgivings. 
Cooke informs us that Goldsmith accidentally, at this time, met 
with an old acquaintance in a chop-house (most probably himself, 
for he elsewhere complains that the Doctor's acquisition of more 
important friends had made their latter intercourse infrequent), 
and mentioning that he had written a comedy about which the 
manager seemed to have great doubts, asked him to listen to the 
plot and give him his candid opinion of it. The Doctor, Cooke 
proceeds, then began to tell the particulars of his plot, in his 
strange, uncouth, deranged manner, from which his friend the 
critic could only make out that the principal part of the business 
turned upon one gentleman mistaking the house of another for an 
inn ; at which the critic shook his head and said " he was afraid 
" the audience, under their then sentimental impressions, would 
" think it too broad and farcical for comedy." Goldsmith looked 
very serious at this ; paused for some time ; and at last, taking 
the other by the hand, "piteously" exclaimed, "I am much 
" obliged to you, my dear friend, for the candour of your opinion : 
" but it is all I can do ; for, alas, I find that my genius, if ever 3i 
" had any, has of late totally deserted me." Alas, poor Goldy ! 
It was the feeling that prompted this, and no other, which also 
prompted his innocent, vain absurdities ; and which made him 
even think, if the same friend's account is to be accepted gravely, 
that " speechifying" was all a knack, and that he knew of nothing 
to prevent himself making any day quite as good a speech as 
Edmund Burke. " How well this post-boy drives," said Johnson 
to Boswell, rubbing his hands with joy for the rapid motion : 



chap, xiv.] SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. 409 

"now if Goldy were here, he'd say he could drive better." And 
simply because he could not drive at all. Sadly distrusting what 
he could do, he thought to set the balance straight by bragging of 
what he could not do. 



CHAPTEE XIV. 



SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. 1772—1773. 

Never was anything like a tone of doleful distrust so little 
called for, as in the case of the comedy of She Stoops to 
Conquer. Goldsmith had here again, as in the Good Natured ^ ' ^ 
Man, taken his stand on the sincere broad ground of 
character and humour, where time has fixed him so firmly ; and the 
final critical verdict has passed which may spare any otner criticism 
on this last legacy of laughter he was now to leave us. Many are 
the sterling comedies that hold possession of the stage, cleverly 
exacting much calm enjoyment, while they chasten all tendency to 
intemperate mirth : but the family of the Hardcastles, Young 
Marlow, and Tony Lumpkin, are not akin to those. Let the 
manager be chary of introducing them, who desires to keep the 
enjoyment of his audience within merely reasonable bounds. 
When Mr. Hardcastle, anxious to initiate Diggory and his too 
familiar fellow-servants into the small decorums of social life, 
warns them against talkativeness, and tells them that if he should 
happen to say a good thing or tell a good story at table, they are 
not all of them to burst out laughing as if they formed part oi 
the company, Diggory makes prompt answer, " Then ecod, your 
" worship must not tell the story of Ould Grouse in the Gun-Room ; 
r I can't help laughing at that . . he ! he ! he ! ... for the soul 
"of me. We have laughed at that these twenty years . . ha ! ha ! 
" ha ! " and his worship, joining in the laugh, admits the story is a 
good one (surely it must have been a real one, and can noFSA 
exhume it, so as to tell us what it was ?) and consents to make it 
an exception. So must exception be made now and then, in the 
case of comedies. With muscles only imperceptibly moved, we 
may sit out some dozen volumes or so of Mrs. Inchbald's Collection : 
but at She Stoops to Conquer, we expand into a roar. The " Three 
"jolly Pigeons " itself never had greater fun going forward in it ; 
and, though genteel critics have objected to the comedy that it 
contains low characters, just as Mrs. Hardcastle objected to the 
ale-house, the whole spirit of the disapproval seems to fade before 



410 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book it. 

Tony's sensible remark, when his mother wants him to desert the 
Pigeons and disappoint the low fellows. "As for disappointing 
" them, I should not so much mind ; but I can't abide to disap- 
" point myself." 

But in truth that objection, strongly as it has been urged, is 
quite untenable, and the verdict of four generations of playgoers 
must be held to have definitively passed against the judgment of the 
fine-gentlemen critics. No one was so bitter about it as Horace 
Walpole, who protested that the heroine had no more modesty 
than Lady Bridget, that the author's wit was as much manque* 
as the lady's, that all the merit was in the comic situations, that, 
in short, the whole view of the piece was low humour, and no 
humour was in it. The worth of a man's judgment of what is low, 
however, is perhaps not unfairly to be tested by comparison with 
his judgment of what is high, since the terms are but relative after 
all ; and it may be well to interpose, that thinking thus of the 
author of She Stoops to Conquer, it was the belief of the same 
fastidious critic that the dramatic works of Mr. Jephson, who had 
happened to write a play founded on the Castle of Otranto, were 
destined to live for ages, and that his Law of Lombard]/ was 
superior to all Beaumont and Fletcher. How opposite is the truth 
to all this (as well in Mr. Goldsmith's as in Mr. Jephson's case), we 
can all of us now perceive and admit. As contrasted with merely 
low comedy, Young Marlow belongs to as genuine " high" corned; 
as anything in Farquhar or Vanbrugh. The idea of the part, wi1 
its •whimsical baslifuiness, its simple mistakes, its awkward dilem- 
mas, is a favourite and familiar one with Goldsmith. To t] 
same family, though marked by traits perfectly distinct, belo] 
Mr. Honeywood ; Moses Primrose ; and the credulous Chinese 
Citizen who entrusts his watch to that beautiful young lady in the 
streets, who with so much generosity takes upon herself the 
trouble of getting it mended for him. There is as little of the 
mere farcical in Young Marlow as in any of these. The high 
comic intention is never lost in the merely ludicrous situation. In 
the transition from stammering modesty with Miss Hardcastle, to 
easy familiarity with the supposed barmaid, the character does not 
lose its identity ; for the over-assumption of ease, and the ridicul- 
ous want of it, are perceived to have exactly the same origin. The 
nervous effort is the same in the excess of bashfuluess, as when it 
tries to rattle itself off by an excess of impudence. It is not 
simply one disguise flung aside for another ; the constitutional 
timidity is kept always ludicrously prominent, but by fine and 
delicate touches. In like manner, Mr. Hardcastle and his wife 
have the same degree of what may be called comic dignity. The 
jovial old squire, with his love for everything that's old, "old 



chap, xiv.] SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. 411 

r friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine," not for- 
getting his own interminable old stories, is just the man to have 
his house mistaken for an inn ; and the man to resent it too, with 
something festive and enjoying in the very robustness of his rage. 
There is altogether, let me add, an exuberant heartiness and 
breadth of genial humour in the comedy, which seems of right to 
overflow into Tony Lumpkin. He may be farcical, as such 
lumpish, roaring, uncouth animal spirits have a right to be : but 
who would abate a bit of Cousin Tony, stupid and cunning as he 

: is, impudent yet sheepish, with his loutish love of low company, 
and his young-squire sense of his " fortin" ? There is never any 
misgiving about Goldsmith's fun and enjoyment. It is not 
obtained at the expense of any better thing. He does not snatch 
a joke out of a misery, or an ugliness, or a mortification ; or any- 
thing that, apart from the joke, would be likely to give pain ; 
which, with all his airy wit and refinement, was too much the 
trick of Sheridan. Whether it be enjoyment, or mischief, going 

j on in one of Goldsmith's comedies, the predominant impression is 

: hearty, jovial, and sincere. Though Tony does tie the tail of 
Mr. Hardcastle's wig to the back of his chair (an incident which 
was but the counterpart of a trick played on himself during his 

; last visit at Gosfield by the daughter of Lord Clare, which she 
often related to her son, Lord Nugent), there is only the broader 
laugh when he wakes and pops his bald head full into old 
Mrs. Frizzle's face ; and nobody feels the worse when the same 
incorrigible Tony, after fearful joltings down Feather-bed-lane, 
over Up-and-down Hill, and across Heavy-tree Heath, lodges his 
mother in the horse-pond. The laugh clears the atmosphere all 
round it. 

But Colman saw nothing of this, wonderful to say. No 

\ laughter, or too much laughter, seemed to be all one to him. He 

I was not to be moved. He had the manuscript of the comedy in 
his hands for many months, and could not determine to say yes 
or no. Poor Goldsmith's early dream that poets were to find 
. protection in the Covent-garden manager, had been doomed to 
I have dire awakening. He was impelled at last to lay all his 
circumstances before him, to describe of what vital moment to its 
writer the acting of this comedy had become, and to make appeal 
from the manager's judgment to the mercy of the friend. But to 

even this he received a general and still evasive answer : 

• 1773 

i reiterating but not specifying objections, and hinting the ^, /~ 

; necessity of taking counsel with other advisers. Thus the 

; matter stood in the middle of January, 1773, when Goldsmith, 

with a galling sense that the best part of the season was passing, 

wrote with renewed earnestness to Colman. 

T 2 



412 OLIVES GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book it. 

Dear Sir, / entreat you'll relieve me from that state of suspense in which I 
have been kept for a long time. Whatever objections you have made or shall 
make to my play, I will endeavour to remove and not argue about them. To 
bring in any new judges either of its merit or faults I can never submit to. 
Upon a former occasion, when my other play was before Mr, Garrick, he offered 
to bring me before Mr. Whitehead's tribunal, but I refused the proposal with 
indignation : I hope I shall not experience as hard treatment from you as from 
him. I have, as you know, a large sum of money to make up shortly ; by 
accepting my play I can readily satisfy my Creditor that way, at any rate I 
must look about to some certainty to be prepared. For God's sake take the 
play and let us make the best of it, and let me have the same measure at least 
svhich you have given as bad plays as mine. I am your friend and servant, 
Oliver Goldsmith. 

In answer to this, the manuscript was at last returned with 
many distasteful remarks written in upon the blank leaves, though 
with an accompanying assurance that the promise of the theatre 
should be kept, and the comedy acted notwithstanding ; but, 
smarting from vexation at Colman's criticism, though now with a j 
dreary misgiving of as ill success at Drury-lane, Goldsmith sent, 
his manuscript a few days later, as he had received it, to Garrick. 
He had hardly done so when he recalled it as hastily. With no ] 
fresh cause for distrust of Garrick, it would seem ; but because 
Johnson had interfered, had pointed out the disadvantage to the 
play in any formal withdrawal from Covent-garden, and had him- 
self gone to talk to Colman about it. This letter to Garrick 
(endorsed in the actor's handwriting ' ' Dr. Goldsmith about his 
" play"), was written on the 6th of February. 

Dear Sir, I ask you many pardons for the trouble I gave you of yesterday. 
Upon more mature deliberation, and the advice of a sensible friend, I began to 
think it indelicate in me to throw upon you the odium of confirming Mr. 
Colman's sentence. I therefore request you will send my play by my servant 
back ; for having been assured of having it acted at the other house, though I 
confess yours in every respect more to my wish, yet it would be folly in me 
to forego an advantage which lies in my power of appealing from Mr. Colman's 
opinion to the judgment of the town. I entreat if not too late, you will keep 
this affair a secret for some time. I am, dear Sir, your very humble servant, 
Oliver Goldsmith. 

Johnson described the spirit of his interview with Colman many, 
years later, when, talking of the steep and thorny road through 
which his friend Goldsmith had had to make his way to fame, he 
reminded Reynolds that both his comedies had been once refused, 
" his first by Garrick, his second by Colman, ivho ivas prevailed on 
" at last by much solicitation, nay, a kind of force, to bring it on ;? 
to which Reynolds replied with a striking illustration of the 
strange crotchets of judgment in such things, to the effect that 
Burke could see no merit in the Beggars' Opera. But in behalf of 
the new comedy, it is ceitain, the three distinguished friends were 
in hearty agreement ; and it is from one of Johnson's letters to 



chap, xiy.] SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. 413 

Boswell, on the 22nd of February, that we learn it is at last about 

to be performed. " Doctor Goldsmith has a new comedy, which 

is expected in the spring. No name is yet given it. The chief 

diversion arises from a stratagem by which a lover is made to 

mistake his future father-in-law's house for an inn. This, you 

see, borders upon farce. The dialogue is quick and gay, and 

the incidents are so prepared as not to seem improbable." But 

though Colman had consented, it was with reservation of his 

original opinion. " Doctor Goldsmith," wrote Johnson ten days 

! later to an American divine (White, afterwards bishop of Penn- 

| sylvania), "has a new comedy in rehearsal at Co vent-garden, to 

' r which the manager predicts ill success. I hope he will be mis- 

" taken. I think it deserves a very kind reception." 

Its chances of a kind reception had received strong reinforcement 
• not many days before. It had been some time noised about that 
j Foote had a novelty in preparation at the Haymarket, founded on 
the Panton-street Puppets, and the town was all on tip-toe to 
j welcome it. l ' Will your figures be as large as life, Mr. Foote ? " 
! asked a titled dame. " Oh, no, my lady," said Foote, " not much 
' " larger than Garrick." The night of The 'Primitive Puppet Shoiv, 
' the 1 5th of February, arrived ; the whole length of the Hay- 
' market was crammed with carriages, while such was the impatience 
the less fashionable crowd in waiting, that the doors were burst of 
open from without ; and to an audience breathless with expected 
merriment, .Foote in due time presented himself. He had to offer 
them on that occasion, he said, a comedy called the Handsome 
Housemaid, or Piety in Pattens ; which was to illustrate how a 
maiden of low degree, by the mere effects of morality and virtue, 
raised herself to riches and honours. But they would not, he 
added, discover much wit or humour in it, because, agreeing with 
the most fashionable of his brother writers, that any signs of joyful 
satisfaction were beneath the dignity of such an assembly as he 
saw before him (roars of laughter interrupted him here), he had 
given up the sensual for the sentimental style. As for the mode 
of representing such a style by means of puppets, he sheltered 
himself behind the examples of the early Greek and Roman 
theatres, tl of which he gave a most luminous and faithful 
4 'historical picture." The Puppet Show proceeded, and senti- 
mental comedy never recovered the shock of that night. Garrick 
set himself at once to laugh at it, as loudly as though he never 
had supported it ; and to that end sent Goldsmith a very 
humorous prologue descriptive of its unhappy fate, a tribute to 
the better prospects of his imsentimental comedy. 

'Not yet in the theatre itself, however, were these felt or under- 
stood. Mortification still attended Goldsmith there. The actors, 



414 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

and the actresses, had taken their tone from the manager. Gentle- 
man Smith threw up Young Marlow ; Woodward refused Tony 
Lumpkin ; Mrs. Abington (and this was the greatest blow of all) 
declined Miss Hardcastle ; and, in the teeth of his own misgivings, 
Colman could not contest with theirs. So alarming was the defec- 
tion, to some of Goldsmith's friends, that they urged the post- 
ponement of the comedy. " No," he said, giving to his necessity 
the braver look of independence, "I'd rather my play were 
" damned by bad players, than merely saved by good acting." 
Tony was cast to Quick, the actor who had played the trifling part 
of the Postboy in his first comedy ; and Shuter, still true to the 
cause of humour and character which he admirably supported in 
Mr. Hardcastle, suggested Lewes for Young Marlow. He was 
afterwards better known as Lee Lewes, to distinguish him from 
the exquisite light comedian whom Cumberland had just dis- 
covered at Dublin, and was writing about, in a capital critical 
style, to Garrick, but who subsequently made his appearance at 
Covent-garden. Lewes was the harlequin of the theatre ; but on 
Shuter protesting in his vehement odd way that " the boy could 
"patter," and "use the gob-box as quick and smart as any of 
" them," Goldsmith consented to the trial ; and before the second 
rehearsal was over, felt sure he would succeed. Famous was the 
company at those rehearsals. Poor Shuter quite lost his presence 
of mind, and quaint talkativeness, at the appearance of so many 
ladies. Johnson attended them ; Reynolds, his sister, and the 
whole Horneck party ; Cradock, Murphy, and Colman. But not 
a jot of the manager's ominous and evil prediction, could all the 
hopeful mirth of the rest abate. He had set his face against 
success. He would not suffer a new scene to be painted fo: 
the play, refused to furnish even a new dress, and was carefi 
to spread his forebodings as widely as he could. Colman w; 
certainly not a false or ill-natured man, but he appears very 
sincerely, though quite unaccountably, to have despaired of the 
comedy from the first, and to have thought it a kind of mercy to 
help it out of, rather than into, the world. 

With a manager so disposed, at almost every step taken within 
the theatre there was of course a stumble. Murphy volunteered 
an epilogue, but the lady who was not to speak it made objection 
to the lady who was ; the author wrote an epilogue to bring in 
both, and the lady first objected-to objected in her turn ; a third 
epilogue was then written by poor Goldsmith, to which Colman 
himself thought proper to object as too bad to be spoken ; Cradock 
meanwhile sent a fourth from the country, rejected for a similar 
reason (but politely printed with the comedy as having " arrived 
" too late") ; and Goldsmith finally tried his hand at a fifth, which, 



chap, xiv.] SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. 415 

though permitted to be spoken, he thought " a mawkish thing. " 
The history of these petty annoyances would be incredible, but 
that Mr. Cradock has preserved a letter in which Goldsmith 
describes them ; and the epilogues, collected with his poems, 
survive to attest its truth. The letter was written immediately 
after the performance, but will most properly be quoted here. 

My dear Sir, The play has met with a success much beyond your expecta- 
tions or mine. I thank you sincerely for your Epilogue, which however could 
not be used, but with your permission shall be printed. The story in short is 
this. Murphy sent me rather the outline of an Epilogue than an Epilogue, 
which was to be suDg by Miss Catley, and which she approved. Mrs. Bulkley 
hearing this, insisted on throwing up her part (Miss Hard castle) unless, accord- 
ing to the custom of the theatre, she were permitted to speak the Epilogue. 
In this embarrassment I thought of making a quarrelling Epilogue between 
Catley and her, debating who should speak the Epilogue ; but then Mrs. Catley 
refused, after I had taken the trouble of drawing it out. I was then at a loss 
indeed ; an Epilogue was to be made, and for none but Mrs. Bulkley. I made 
one, and Colman thought it too bad to be spoken ; I was obliged therefore to 
try a fourth time, and I made a very mawkish thing, as you'll shortly see. 
Such is the history of my Stage adventures, and which I have at last done with. 
I cannot help saying, that I am very sick of the stage ; and though I believe I 
shall get three tolerable benefits, yet I shall on the whole be a loser, even in a 
pecuniary light : my ease and comfort I certainly lost while it was in agitation. 
I am, my dear Cradock, your obliged and obedient servant, Oliver Goldsmith. 
P.S. Present my most humble respects to Mrs. Cradock. 

This anticipates a little ; seeing that some touches to the loss of 
ease and comfort are yet to be added. There were but a few days 
left before the comedy was to be acted, and no name had been 
found for it. " We are all in labour," says Johnson, whose 
labour of kindness had been untiring throughout, "for a name to 
" Goldy's play." What now stands as the second title, The Mis- 
takes of a Night, was originally the only one ; but it was thought 
undignified for a comedy. The Old House a New Inn was sug- 
gested in place of it, but dismissed as awkward. Reynolds then 
announced what he thought so capital a title, that he threatened, 
if it were not adopted, he should go and help to damn the play ; 
and he triumphantly named it The Belle's Stratagem. This name 
was still under discussion, and had well nigh been snatched from 
Mrs. Cowley, when Goldsmith (in whose ear perhaps Dryden's 
line may have lingered, 

But kneels to conquer, and but stoops to rise) 

hit upon She Stoo2^s to Conquer. " Stoops, indeed 1 ?" was Horace 
Walpole's comment. " So she does ! that is, the Muse ; she 
"is draggled up to the knees, and has trudged, I believe, from 
' ' Southwark Fair. " Surely, then, no wonder was it that those in- 
disputably fine ladies of the theatre should object to hold up such 



416 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

homely and miry petticoats ; nor was the poor author without 
graver troubles which he could not remedy, and he left the last 
rehearsal with a heavy heart. His probable failure had been made 
matter of such common gossip, that it was even announced in the 
box-office to the servant who was engaging a box for the Duke of 
Gloucester ; and a very angry remonstrance with Colman followed. 
Up to this time, Goldsmith had not been able to muster courage to 
begin the printing of his play ; but in a kind of desperation he 
now went to Francis Newbery, and, in redemption of the debt 
between them which had lately cost him some anxiety, offered him 
the chances of the copyright. "And yet to tell you the truth," 
he added, "there are great doubts of its success." Newbery 
nevertheless thought it safe to accept the offer, by which he after- 
wards very largely profited. 

The eventful day arrived (Monday the 15th of March), and 
Goldsmith's friends were summoned to a tavern dinner, arranged 
and to be presided over by Johnson. George Steevens was one ; 
and, in calling on his way to the tavern to take up the old zealous 
philosopher, found him ready dressed, "but in coloured clothes." 
There was a court mourning at the time, for the King of Sardinia ; 
and, being reminded of this by Steevens, and that he would find 
every one else in black, Johnson hastened with reiterated thanks 
to change his dress, profuse in his gratitude for being saved from 
an appearance so improper in the "front row of a front box," and 
protesting that he would not "for ten pounds" have seemed "so 
"retrograde to any general observance." At this dinner, besides 
Johnson and Steevens, Burke and his brother Richard were pre- 
sent, with Sir Joshua Reynolds, Caleb Whitefoord, and (he would 
himself have us believe) Cumberland and a party of Scotch friends. 
But, for the presence of Cumberland and his friends, his own 
Memoirs, little better than an amusing collection of apocryphal 
things, is the sole authority : and not only has he described a 
jumble of a party that could never have assembled (putting in 
poor Fitzherbert as a guest, though he had already destroyed him- 
self), but, in giving everybody the ludicrous air of a patronising 
superiority to Goldsmith, and declaring their only desire to have 
been to obtain a triumph "not only over Colmans judgment but 
"their own," he has so unblushingly mis-stated the known opinions 
of Johnson and the rest in connection with the play, that his 
whole scene proclaims itself romance. It is a Sir Fretful good- 
humouredly describing the success of a brother dramatist. 

He says that he and his friends had little hope of success, but 
were perfectly determined to struggle hard for their author ; that 
they assembled their strength at the Shakespeare-tavern (it is much 
more likely to have been the St. James's coffee-house), where 



chap, xiv.] SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. 4] 7 

Johnson took the chair at the head of a long-table, " and was the 
1 life and soul of the corps ; " that though his own jokes, and his 
raillery of Goldsmith, were a better comedy, and much more 
attractive, than that which awaited them, they started in good 
time for their duty at the theatre, taking with them a band of 
determined North British claqueurs ; that they distributed them 
selves at separate and allotted posts, with preconcerted signals foi 
applause, elaborately communicating each with the other ; that his 
' own station was as flapper to a simple Scotch worthy with a most 
contagious roar of a laugh, but with no notion how to use it, who, 
I from laughing upon signal where he found no joke, proceeded to find 
j a joke and a roar on his own account in almost everything said ; 
and that, though these mal-a-propos bursts of friendly thunder 
gave umbrage now and then to the pit, the success of (not the 
comedy, but) "our manoeuvres" was complete, and the curtain 
fell to a triumph. 

Alas ! while Cumberland, writing more than thirty years after 
the event, would have us thus believe that hardly anybody was 
laughing but himself and friends, the papers of the day report him 
to have been seen as manifestly miserable in one box, as Hugh 
Kelly and Ossian Macpherson showed themselves in another ; — not 
only when Woodward came on, in mourning, to speak Garrick's 
satirical prologue against the sentimentalists, but also while the 
laughter, as the comedy went on, seemed to peal the death-knell 
of their school ; and particularly when one hearty shout went up 
for Tony's friend at the Jolly Pigeons, the bear-leader who never 
danced his bear but to the very genteelest of tunes, Water Parted 
or the Minuet in Ariadne. Northcote was present, and wrote to 
his brother that " quite the reverse to everybody's expectation, it 
"was received with the utmost applause." Mr. Day was present, 
and also gives the weight of his judicial authority against Cumber- 
land. He says that he and some friends, knowing the adverse 
expectations entertained of the piece, had assembled in great 
force in the pit to protect it ; but they found no difficulty to 
encounter, for it was " received throughout with the greatest 
"acclamations." Indeed all the probabilities are against Cumber- 
land's account (even Horace Walpole writes to Lady Ossory from 
Arlington-street, the morning after the comedy, * ' there was a new 
" play by Dr. Goldsmith last night, which succeeded prodigiously ") ; 
and only one sentence in it, confirmed by every other authority, 
can be pronounced not questionable. "All eyes were upon John- 
" son," he says, "who sat in a front row in a side box ; and when 
"he laughed, everybody thought himself warranted to roar." 

Goldsmith had not come with his friends to the theatre. During 
the dinner, as Sir Joshua afterwards told JSTorthcote, not only did 

t3 






418 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

he hardly speak a word, but was so choked that he could not 
swallow a mouthful ; and when the party left for the theatre, he 
went an opposite way. A friend found him sauntering between 
seven and eight o'clock in the Mall of St. James'-park, — strug- 
gling to be brave, it may be, with the reflection of what an 
illustrious line of Ben Jonsons, Websters, Fletchers, Dekkers, 
Drydens, Congreves, and Fieldings, are comprised in the company 
of "stage-damned," — and it was only on his friend's earnest 
representation of how useful his presence might be, should sudden 
alteration be found necessary in any scene, that he was prevailed on 
to go to the theatre. He entered the stage-door at the opening of 
the fifth act, and heard a solitary hiss at the improbability of Mrs. 
Hardcastle, in her own garden, supposing herself forty miles off on 
Crackscull common (a trick, nevertheless, which Sheridan actually 
played off on Madame de Genlis). " What's that ?" he cried out, 
alarmed not a little at the 'sound. "Psha! Doctor," said Colman, 
who was standing at the side-scene, doubtless well pleased to have 
even so much sanction for all his original forebodings, " don't be 
" afraid of a squib, when we have been sitting these two hours on 
"a barrel of gunpowder." Cooke, who gives the best version of 
this anecdote, corrects assertions elsewhere made that it had 
happened at the last rehearsal ; tells us that Goldsmith himself 
had related it to him; and adds that "he never forgave it to 
"Colman to the last hour of his life." To all the actors his 
gratitude was profuse. So thankful had the Tony Lumpkin made 
him, in making also Quick's fortune, that he altered a translation of 
Sedley's from Brueys' comedy of Le Grondeur, adapted it as a 
farce (which Thomas Moore, who saw the French original fifty 
years afterwards at the Francais, says it already was, and a 
wretchedly dull one), and suffered it to be played with his name 
for the benefit of Quick, before the season closed ; and so pleased 
was he with the exertions of Lee Lewes, that on the occasion of his 
benefit, on the night preceding Quick's, he wrote him an occasional 
epilogue, in his pleasantest vein. 

The hiss appears to have been really a solitary one ; for no differ- 
ence is to be found in any reliable account, either public or 
private, as to the comedy's absolute success, and the extraordinarj 7 
"acclamations " that rang through the theatre " when it was given 
" out for the author's benefit." Indeed the hiss was so notedly 
exceptional, that one paper gives it to Cumberland, another to 
Kelly, and a third, in a parody on Ossian, to Macpherson, who 
had strong reason for hostility to all the Johnson "clique." It 
became the manager's turn to be afraid of squibs ; for never with 
more galling effect had they played round any poor mortal's head, 
than now, for some weeks to come, they rattled round that of 



3HAP. xiv.] SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. 419 

Colman. Even Wilkes left his graver brawls to try his hand at 
them. The sentimentalist leaders were hit heavily on all sides ; 
but the evil-boding manager, to use his own expression, was put 
upon the rack. He ran away to Bath to escape the torture, but 
it followed him even there, and to Goldsmith himself he at last 
interceded for mercy. " Colman is so distressed with abuse," 
writes Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, "that he has solicited Goldsmith 
i "to take him off the rack of the newspapers." Johnson's sub- 
i sequent judgment of the comedy need hardly be quoted. " I 
" know of no comedy for many years that has so much exhilarated 
" an audience ; that has answered so much the great end of comedy, 
" making an audience merry." When in the theatre, even Horace 
Walpole, though he must have winced a little at the laugh raised 
in the course of the performance at an old lady friend of his, and 
a club of which they both were members (the Albemarle-street, 
to which young Marlow represents himself playing the agre3able 
Rattle, and keeping it up with Miss Biddy Buckskin till three in the 
morning), even he found himself obliged to admit that some of the 
characters were well acted, and that Garrick's "poor epilogue" 
was admirably spoken by Woodward ; and, in short, he has to 
justify his general ill opinion of the piece by remarking that a 
play may make you laugh very much indeed, and yet be a very 
wretched comedy. Goldsmith was not indisposed, nevertheless, 
to be quite contented with that test. " Did it make you laugh ?" 
he asked J^orthcote, who had applauded lustily in the gallery in 
company with Ralph, Sir Joshua's confidential man, but was too 
modest to offer an opinion of his own, when asked next day. 
" Exceedingly," was the answer. " Then that is all I require ; " 
and the author promised him half-a-dozen tickets for his first benefit 
night. 

This night, and its two successors, are supposed to have realised 
between four and five hundred pounds ; and the comedy ran to 
the end of the season, with only such interruptions as holidays and 
benefit nights interposed. The tenth night was by royal com- 
mand, and the twelfth was the season's closing night, on the 31st 
of May. But Foote acted it in the summer at the Haymarket, 
and it was resumed in winter with the re-opening of Covent- 
garden. Again it had the compliment of a royal command ; ran 
many merry nights that second season ; has made thousands of 
honest people merry, every season since ; and still continues to 
add its yearly sum to the harmless stock of public pleasure. 
Goldsmith had meanwhile printed it with all dispatch, and 
dedicated it to Johnson. "In inscribing this slight performance 
"to you," he said, "I do not mean so much to compliment you 
" as myself. It may do me some honour to inform the public, 



420 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

"that I have lived many years in intimacy with you. It may 
"serve the interests of mankind also to inform them, that the I' 
" greatest wit may be found in a character, without impairing the 1 
" most unaffected piety." 



CHAPTEK XV. 



THE SHADOW AND THE SUNSHINE. 1773. 

Oiste dark shadow fell upon Goldsmith in the midst of the 
success of She Stoops to Conquer, and it came as usual 
2g t 45 from Kenrick. Nine days after the appearance of the 
comedy, a personal attack by that professional libeller 
appeared in an evening paper called the London Packet. It was 
not more gross than former favours from the same hand had been. 
All his writings were denounced in it. The Traveller was "flimsy," 
the Deserted Village " without fancy or fire," the Good Natured 
Man "water-gruel," and She Stoops to Conquer "a speaking pan- 
" tomime." Harmless abuse enough, and such as plays the shadow 
to all success ; for even the libeller is compelled to admit that 
"it is now the ton to go and see " the comedy he so elaborately 
abuses. Swift's sign of a genius is, that the dunces are in con- 
federacy against him ; and there is always a large and active class 
of them in literature. To the end of the chapter, the Dryden 
will have his Shadwell, and the Pope his Dennis ; and still the 
signum fatale Minervoz will be a signal for the huic date, the old 
cry of attack. " Give it him," is the sentence, if he shows signs 
of life in genius or learning ; and the execution seldom fails. But 
a man who enters literature, enters it on this condition. He has 
to reflect that, sooner or later, he will be stamped for as much 
as he is worth ; and meanwhile has to think that probably his 
height, dimensions, and prowess might not be so well discerned, if 
less men than himself did not thus surround and waylay him at j 
his starting. Without extenuation of the unjust assailant, so 
much is fairly to be said ; without in the least agitating the 
question whether a petty larceny or a petty libel be the more 
immoral, or whether it be the more criminal to filch a purse or a 
good name. Shakespeare has decided that. But the present libel 
in the London Packet went far beyond the bounds indicated ; and 
to which allusion has only been made, that the incident now to 
be related may be judged correctly. Goldsmith had patiently 
suffered worse public abuse ; and would doubtless here have suf- 



chap, xv.] THE SHADOW AND THE SUNSHINE. 421 

fered as patiently, if baser matter had not been introduced. But 
the libeller had invaded private life, and dragged in the Jessamy 

Bride. " Was but the lovely H k as much enamoured, you 

"would not sigh, my gentle swain, in vain." Having read this, 
he felt it was his duty to resent it. Captain Charles Horneck, 
the lady's brother, is thought to have accompanied him to the office 
of the London Packet, in ignorance of his precise intention ; but 
his companion is more likely to have been Captain Higgins. It is 
a strong presumption against the other Captain's presence, that 
Goldsmith's anger had been chiefly excited by the allusion to his 
sister. 

Thomas Evans was the publisher (from a note found among his 
papers, Goldsmith at first seems to have thought him the editor) ; 
and must not be confounded with the worthy bookseller of the 
same name, who first collected Goldsmith's writings. This other 
Thomas Evans was more eccentric than amiable. He had so 
violent a quarrel with one of his sons, that he allowed him, a year 
and a half before his own death, literally to perish in the streets ; 
he separated from his wife, because she sided with her son in that 
quarrel ; and he would have disinherited his heirs if they had not 
buried him without coffin or shroud, and limited his funeral 
expenses to forty shillings. His assistant at this time was a 
young man named Harris, whose name afterwards rivalled New- 
bery's in the affection of children, having succeeded to Francis 
Newbery's business, carried on as the firm of Carnan and JSTewbery, 
in St. Paul's-churchyard. It was of him that Goldsmith and the 
Captain inquired whether Evans was at home ; and he has 
described what followed. He called Evans from an adjoining 
room, and heard him thus addressed : "I have called in con- 
" sequence of a scurrilous attack in your paper upon me (my name 
" is Goldsmith), and an unwarrantable liberty taken with the 
" name of a young lady. As for myself I care little, but her 
' ' name must not be sported with. " Evans, upon this, declaring 
ignorance of the matter, saying he would speak to the editor, and 
stooping as though to look for the libel, — Goldsmith struck him 
smartly with his cane across the back. But Evans, being a strong 
sturdy man, returned the blow "with interest;" and in the 
sudden scuffle a lamp suspended over-head was broken, the com- 
batants covered with the oil, and the undignified affray brought 
to a somewhat ludicrous pause. Then there stepped from the 
adjoining editorial room, which Evans had lately quitted, no less 
a person than Kenrick himself, who had certainly written the 
libel, and who is described to have "separated the parties, and 
" sent Goldsmith home in a coach ;" greatly disfigured, according 
to Cradock ; the Captain who accompanied him, standing trans- 






422 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

fixed with amazement. Evans subsequently indicted Goldsmith 
for the assault, but consented to a compromise on his paying fifty 
pounds to a Welch charity. 

But this money payment was the least of the fines exacted. 
All the papers abused the poor sensitive poet, even such as were 
ordinarily favourable to him ; and all of them steadily turned 
aside from the real point in issue. At last he stated it himself ; 
in an address to the public which was published in the Daily 
Advertiser of the 31st of March, and a portion of which is worth 
subjoining. The abuse at which it was aimed had at this time 
grown to an intolerable height. The Mr. Snakes, whom Sheridan 
satirised a few years later, were spawning in abundance. " I am 
" not employed in the political line, but in private disputes," said 
one of them this year to Tommy Townshend, explaining why he 
had preferred entering into the service of the newspapers rather 
than into that of the ministers. Attacks upon private character 
were the most liberal existing source of newspaper income. 

Of late, the press has turned from defending public interest, to making 
inroads upon private fife; from combating the strong, to overwhelming the 
feeble: No condition is now too obscure for its abuse, and the protector is 
become the tyrant of the people. In this manner the freedom of the press is 
beginning to sow the seeds of its own dissolution ; the great must oppose it 
from principle, and the weak from fear ; till at last every rank of mankind 
shall be found to give up its benefits, content with security from its insults. 
By treating them with silent contempt, we do not pay a sufficient deference to 
the opiuion of the world. By recurring to legal redress, we too often expose 
the weakness of the law, which only serves to increase our mortification by 
failing to relieve us. In short, every man should singly consider himself as a 
guardian of the liberty of the press, and, as far as his influence can extend, 
should endeavour to prevent its licentiousness becoming at last the grave of its 
freedom. 

Johnson called the address a foolish thing well done, and ac- 
counted for it by supposing its author so much elated by the success 
of his new comedy as to think everything that concerned him 
must be of importance to the public. Boswell had come up for his 
London holiday two days after it appeared, and thought it so well 
done, that knowing Johnson to have dictated arguments in Scotch 
appeals and other like matters for himself, he assumed Johnson 
to have done it. " Sir," said Johnson, " Doctor Goldsmith would 
" no more have asked me to have wrote such a thing as that, than 
" he would have asked me to feed him with a spoon, or to do any- 
" thing else that denoted his imbecility." 

A few days later, Boswell repaired to his Fleet-street place of 
worship with news that he had been to see Goldsmith, and with 
regrets that he had fallen into a loose way of talking. He reported 
him to have said, "As I take my shoes from the shoemaker, and 



,3HAP. xv.] THE SHADOW AND THE SUNSHINE. 423 

: 'my coat from the tailor, so I take my religion from the priest.'' 
A silly thing to say, if gravely said : but not so, if merely used to 
dismiss Bozzy's pestering habit of intruding solemn subjects, and 
flourishing weapons of argument over them which he knew not how 
to handle. But Johnson happened to be in no humour to dis- 
criminate, and simply answered : " Sir, he knows nothing ; he has 
" made up his mind about nothing." 

On the thirteenth of April the three dined alone with Genera] 
! Oglethorpe and his family, and Goldsmith showed them that at 
least he could sing. After taking prominent part in the after- 
dinner talk, expatiating on one of his favourite themes of the effect 
of luxury in degenerating races, and maintaining afterwards a dis- 
cussion with Johnson, he sang with great applause, on joining the 
ladies at tea, not only Tony Lumpkin's song of the Three Jolly 
Pigeons, but a very pretty one to the Irish tune of the Humours 
of Ballamagaiiy, which he had written for Miss Hardcastle, but 
which Mrs. Bulkley cut out, not being able to sing. Two days 
later, the three again met at General Paoli's ; and what even 
Boswell noted down of Goldsmith's share in the conversation, is no 
unreasonable answer to his own and Johnson's multiplied charges 
of absurdity and ignorance. What Goldsmith says for the most 
part is excellent sense, very tersely and happily expressed. The 
exception was a hasty remark upon Sterne, to whose writings he 
was not yet become reconciled. Johnson had instanced "the 
" man Sterne " as having had engagements for three months, in 
proof that anybody who has a name will have plenty of invitations 
in London. "And a very dull fellow," interposed Goldsmith. 
" Why, no, sir," said Johnson. He came off better in a subsequent 
good-humoured hit against Johnson himself, who, describing his 
poor-author days and the quantities of prefaces and dedications he 
had written, declared that he had dedicated to the royal family all 
round ; " and perhaps, sir," suggested Goldsmith, " not one sentence 
" of wit in a whole dedication 1" " Perhaps not, sir," the other 
humanely admitted. 

And here once for all let me say, as to Goldsmith's share in this 
and other conversations now to be recorded, that it is never a real 
deficiency of sense or knowledge that is to be noted in him, so 
much as an occasional blundering precipitancy which does no 
justice to what is evidently a view of the subject not incorrect in 
the main. It will in some sort illustrate my meaning to quote a 
passage from Swift's Journal to Stella. " I have," he writes, "my 
" mouth full of water, and was going to spit it out, because I 
" reasoned with myself, how could I write when my mouth was 
" full. Have not you done things like that, reasoned wrong at 
"first thinking f" This is what Goldsmith was constantly doing 






424 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

in society — reasoning wrong at first thinking — with the dis- 
advantage that those first thoughts got blurted out, and the 
thoughts that corrected them came too late. 

He and Johnson, still at Paoli's dinner-table, fell into something | 
like an argument as to whether Signor Martinelli, a very 
fashionable and complacent teacher of Italian who had written a 
history of England (he was present at the dinner, or they would 
hardly have spoken so respectfully of a mere compilation from I 
Rapin), should continue his history to the present day. "To be 
"sure he should," said Goldsmith. " No, sir," said Johnson, 
" he would give great offence. He would have to tell of almost 
" all the living great what they do not wish to be told." To this 
Goldsmith replied, that it might perhaps be necessary for a native ' 
to be more cautious ; but a foreigner, who came among us without 
prejudice, might be considered as holding the place of a judge, and 
might speak his mind freely. Johnson retorted that the foreigner 
was just as much in danger of catching " the error and mistaken 
" enthusiasm" of the people he happened to be among. " Sir," 
persisted Goldsmith, " he wants only to sell his history, and to tell 
"truth: one an honest, the other a laudable motive." "Sir," 
returned Johnson, " they are both laudable motives. It is laudable 
" in a man to wish to live by his labours ; but he should write so 
"as he may live by them, not so as he may be knocked on the 
"head. I would advise him to be at Calais before he writes his 
" history of the present age. A foreigner who attaches himself to 
" a political party in this country, is in the worst state that can be 
" imagined ; he is looked upon as a mere intermeddler. A native 
" may do it from interest." "Or principle," interposed Boswell. 
Goldsmith's observation on this was not very logical, it must be 
confessed. ' ' There are people who tell a hundred political lies 
"every day," he said, "and are not hurt by it. Surely, then, 
" one may tell truth with safety." " Why, sir," Johnson 
answered, "a man had rather have a hundred lies told of him, 
"than one truth which he does not wish to be told." " Well," 
protested Goldsmith, " for my part, I'd tell the truth, and shame 
" the devil." " Yes, sir," said the other ; " but the devil will be 
" angry. I wish to shame the devil as much as you do, but I 
" should choose to be out of the reach of his claws." " His claws 
1 1 can do you no harm, when you have the shield of truth," was 
Goldsmith's happy retort, which on the whole perhaps left the 
victory with him. The same spirit, but not so good an argument, 
was in his subsequent comment on Johnson's depreciation of the 
learning of Harris of Salisbury, the first Lord Malmesbury's father. 
" He may not be an eminent Grecian," he interposed, " but he is • 
" what is much better ; he is a worthy humane man. " ' ' Nay, 



chap, xv.] THE SHADOW AND THE SUNSHINE. 425 

" sir," said Johnson, "that will as much prove that he can play 
"upon the fiddle as well as Giardini, as that he is an eminent 
' ' Grecian. " Goldsmith felt this ; and turned off with a remark 
that "the greatest musical performers have small emoluments. 
" Giardini, I am told, does not get above seven hundred a year." 
" That," replied Johnson, with a philosophy worthy of Adam 
Smith, "is indeed but little for a man to get, who does best that 
"which so many endeavour to do." Then there was some talk 
about She Stoo}os to Conquer ; and little weaknesses of Goldsmith's 
peeped out. 

Somebody wondered if the King would come to see the new p] ay 
"I wish he would," said Goldsmith quickly. "Not," he added, 
with a show of indifference meant to cover his too great earnest- 
ness, " that it would do me the least good." " Well then, sir," said 
Johnson, laughing, "let us say it would do him good. No, sir, 
" this affectation will not pass : it is mighty idle. In such a state 
" as ours, who would not wish to please the chief magistrate i" 
" I do wish to please him," returned Goldsmith frankly, and eager 
to repair his error. " 1 remember a line in Dryden, 

And every poet is the monarch's friend. 

"It ought to be reversed." "Nay, there are finer lines in 
"Dryden on this subject," said Johnson ; and, not caring for the 
moment to recollect that their host had been a rebel, he quoted 
the couplet, 

For colleges on bounteous kings depend, 
And never rebel was to arts a friend. 

"Nay," said Paoli, " successful rebels might.''' "Happy rebellions," 
explained Martinelli. " We have no such phrase," said Goldsmith. 
"But have you not the thing V asked Paoli. " Yes," the other 
answered ; "all our happy revolutions. They have hurt our 
" constitution, and will hurt it, till we mend it by another happy 
"revolution." Bos well adds that he never before discovered that 
his friend Goldsmith had " so much of the old prejudice in him :" 
but the remark was more probably thrown out, at once to please 
old Johnson and at the same time vindicate his own independence 
in the matter of royalty. The turn taken by the conversation 
would seem to .indicate this. 

"II a fait," said Paoli of Goldsmith, " un compliment tres- 
" gracieux a une certaine grande dame." The allusion was to a 
strong intimation in She Stoops to Conquer of its author's dislike 
of the Royal Marriage Act, and sympathy with its victim the 
Duchess of Gloucester. The Duke of Cumberland had been for- 
bidden the Court on his marriage with a handsome widow, Mrs. 



426 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv, 

Horton (Lord Carhampton's, better known as Colonel Luttrel's, 
sister), a year before : but on the Duke of Gloucester's subsequent 
avowal of his marriage with another and more charming widow, 
Lady Waldegrave (Sir Edward Walpole's natural daughter), the 
King's indignation found vent in the Royal Marriage Act ; which 
was hotly opposed by the whigs as an edict of tyranny, Lords 
Rockingham and Camden contesting it at every stage in the Lords, 
and Goldsmith (perhaps for Burke's sake) helping to make it 
unpopular with the people. "We'll go to France," says Hastings 
to Miss Neville, "for there, even among slaves, the laws of. 
" marriage are respected." Said on the first night, this had directed 
repeated cheering and popular applause to the Duke of Gloucester, 
who sat in one of the boxes ; and it now drew forth the allusion of 
Paoli. But Boswell was not content with a mere hint. Feeling 
that Goldsmith "might not wish to avow positively his taking 
"part against the Court," and that therefore it was not fair to 
endeavour to bring him to a confession, he naturally resolved, 
upon the instant, to bring him to it if he could : so, in order that 
he might hear the exact truth from himself, he straightway 
doubted if the allusion had ever been intended. Goldsmith smiled 
and hesitated ; when Paoli hastened to relieve him with an 
elegant metaphor. ' ' Monsieur Goldsmith est comme la iner, qui 
"jette des perles et beaucoup d'autres belles choses, sans s'en 
" apercevoir." " Tres bien dit, et tres elegamment," said 
Goldsmith, highly pleased. 

Five days afterwards he dined at Thrale's ; again argued with 
Johnson ; and seems to me to have had the best of the argument. 
Talking of poor Fitzherbert's melancholy suicide the year before, 
Johnson said he had often thought, that, after a man had taken 
the resolution to kill himself, it was not courage in him to do 
anything however desperate, because he had nothing to fear. 
" I don't see that," remarked Goldsmith, reasonably enough. 
" Nay, but my dear sir," said Johnson, rather unreasonably, 
"why should you not see what every one else sees 1" " Why," 
was Goldsmith's reply, " it is for fear of something that he has 
"resolved to kill himself; and will not that timid disposition 
" restrain him ?" Johnson's retort was a sophism exactly con- 
firming Goldsmith's view. The argument arose, he said, on the 
resolution taken, not on the inducement to take it. Determine, 
and you have nothing more to fear ; you may go and take the 
king of Prussia by the nose, at the head of his army ; " you can- 
"not fear the rack, who are resolved to kill yourself." Gold- 
smith's obvious answer might have been, It is precisely because I 
fear the rack that I have resolved to kill myself ; but there the 
argument ended, 



1 



I 



chap, xv.] THE SHADOW AND THE SUNSHINE. 42? 

Garrick's vanity was another topic started at this dinner ; and 
Johnson, while he accounted for it, and justified it, by the many 
bellows that had blown the fire, was interrupted by the " and such 
" bellows too ! " of Boswell, who proceeded to count up the notes 
of famous people (enough to turn his head) that he had persuaded 
Garrick to show him — "Lord Mansfield with his cheeks like to 
' ' burst, Lord Chatham like an ^Eolus " — all which praises 
Johnson quietly explained with a ready adaptation of a line in 
Congreve, " True. When he whom everybody else flatters, flatters 
"me, then I am truly happy." Whereupon quick little Mrs. 
Thrale reminded him that he was here only adapting Congreve. 
" Yes, madam," he replied, " in the Way of the World. 

If there's delight in love, 'tis when I see 

That heart which others bleed for, bleed for me ! " 

But he was not so tolerant of his old friend eight days later, 
when the same party, with Reynolds, Langton, and Thrale, dined 
at General Oglethorpe's. Goldsmith here had said he thought it 
' ' mean and gross flattery " in Garrick to have foisted into 
the dialogue of Beaumont and Fletcher's play of the Chances, 
which he revived that year, a compliment to the Queen ; 
when Johnson, with somewhat needless warmth, remarked, "As 
"to meanness, sir, how is it mean in a player, a showman, a fellow 
' ' who exhibits himself for a shilling, to flatter his queen 1 " In 
admirable taste followed the calm and just rebuke of the kindly 
Reynolds. "I do not perceive why the profession of a player 
" should be despised ; for the great and. ultimate end of all the 
" employments of mankind is to produce amusement. Garrick 
"produces more amusement than anybody." This emboldened 
Boswell to hazard the analogy of a lawyer with a player, the one 
exhibiting for his fee as the other for his shilling ; whereon 
Johnson roughly seized him, turned the laugh against him, and 
covered his own retreat. "Why, sir, what does this prove '? only 
" that a lawyer is worse. Boswell is now like Jack in the Tale oj 
"a Tub, who, when he is puzzled by an argument" (it was 
Arbuthnot's, not Swift's Jack, and it was for no such reason, but 
it served Johnson's laugh to say so), " hangs himself. He thinks 
" I shall cut him down," and here he laughed vociferously, " but 
" I'll let him hang." Boswell's comfort in annoyances of this sort 
was to diffuse the annoyance by describing the whole scene next 
day to some one whom it equally affected. Garrick would in this 
case, of course, be the first to hear all that had passed. But 
Garrick's revenges on Johnson were harmless enough. At his 
angriest, he would only pay him off by exhib" ,ing his fondness for 
his old wife, Tetty, in their earlie/ ^u.or jt Lichfield days ; or 



"« OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [b00k iv 

and callmg out with a broad Lichfield twang "whl f T* 
£ perhaps he would imitate his deliver^ ^he ^rtfCs J 

^^ S SSe7a^rX 

J— f^ The" LT^abtfr ff^ iate * Cted ' >°°^ 
a kind of contorted movant o U 7 ^f the ^"^ wi * 
the four last words till In the hi I VMe he Pounced 

implored the mnnic to desLt ""' ^^^ With la ^er, 

eattg°t Sttl* e wh a \ 0g rt° rPe L S taMe WaS *"» <""*» of 

"carnage." " Yes " l e ld' ^* eXP i, ^ U * the " sm ell of 

"abhorLceiuanLalTth es i™ T ' " ^ iS a « eneraI 
" tnh fnli n e 1,1 ~i • , Slgns of massacre. If T ou nut » 

from others as he must lea™ „tf ' akln « hls formation 

he might make hat' ! \ res P onsiM e for such errors as 

experiment, and so e^oTe a m self o ^Zg % ^ **<* 
ments „ to every particular. £om tiT the T ? S eXperi " 
to hterary subjects and P^ ^ , conversation passed 

character 7 of MaS' "% ' "^ * % ' 7 ° f "» 
"tad talents enough to keen hk lit hnS ° n ' " Mallet 

"as he himself livX „„aII ^is ^erary reputation alive as long 

"But," ^lt;i h ! m ° * eU y ° U > k a g0 °d deal." 



qj chap, xvi.] THE CLUB. 



CHAPTEK XVI. 



THE CLUB. 1773. 



Measured by the test we have seen Goldsmith apply to Johnson's 
veputation with the booksellers, his own, though still alive, 
must be held as now sadly in arrear. He had at this time ^+45 
several disputes with booksellers pending, and his circum- 
stances were verging to positive distress. The necessity of com- 
pleting his Animated Nature, for which all the money had been 
received and spent, hung like a mill-stone upon him ; his advances 
had been considerable upon other works, as yet not even begun ; 
the money from his comedy was still coming in, but it could not, 
with the debts it had to satisfy, float his stranded fortunes ; and 
he was now, in what leisure he could get from his larger book, 
working at a Grecian History, in the hope of procuring means to 
meet his daily liabilities. The future was thus gradually and gloomily 
darkening ; but, while he could, he was happy and content not to 
look beyond the present, cheerful or careless as it might be. He 
sought relief in society, and went more than ever to the club. 

The change he had himself very strongly advocated was now 
made in this celebrated society ; the circle of its members was 
enlarged to twenty ; and he took renewed interest in its meetings. 
A sort of understanding was at the same time entered into, that the 
limit of attendances to secure continued membership, should be at 
least twice in five weeks ; and that more frequent attendance would 
be expected from all. The election of Garrick was proposed to fill 
the first vacancy. This had been zealously seconded by Goldsmith ; 
and three nights before She Stoops to Conquer came out, Garrick 
made his first appearance in Gerrard-street. On Beauclerc's propo- 
sition, the same night, they elected his friend and fellow-traveller 
Lord Charlemont, the Irish peer whose subsequent patriotism 
made the title so illustrious. Burke then proposed a friend of 
Lord Charlemont' s and his own, Mr. Agmondesham Vesey, the 
husband of Mrs. Montagu's blue-stocking friend ; introducing his 
name with the remark that he was a man of gentle manners. 
" Sir," interrupted Johnson, " you need say no more. When you 
"have said a man of gentle manners, you have said enough." 
Nevertheless, when Vesey, with school-boy gentleness of talk, 
introduced one day at the club the subject of Catiline's conspiracy, 
Johnson withdrew his attention and thought about Tom Thumb. 



«0 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [ B00K „. 

Not many days after Vesey's election, Mr William W, . 
lawyer and accomplished scholar of the IW»riTwh« 1 '* JT g 

had this year made pleasing additions to the select storprfT't 

KM::.?— ?=■£££ 

love of a joke, would have carried either so for iM? 

resolute, and had but one answer to^ S^^TC 
had refused szr," he said afterwards to Bo/well, "they knew 
they d never have got in another. I'd have kept them all out » 

Burke had not yet seen the busy, consequential! offieLfyout 

Scotchman, who had so effectually tacked himself on to them oM 

h7w s ; <<fi t »tr 6 had , h r rd ' "^ *» t0 -P- a'douLt t 
ffe was fit for Gerrard-street, and the doubt was not likely to 
be removed by Boswell's own efforts to secure his ejection t£ 

z=xssx^szr^ " »- - * 
sri~? H * - " «- «■ -" irt 

humour naturally, it was scarce to be held a virtue h! bin? Boswefi 
was mdeed enunently social, for society was his very id" to whl h 
he made sacrifice of everything. He had all kinds of brisk and 
hvely ways, good humour, and perpetual cheerfulness. He was to 

bTZ ■ ' Tj an ",? 0B the academi «™> the harbinger of ferity 
He was Lord StoweU's realisation of a good-natured jolly felTow' 

accouTt rfGoll W !, ak ? eSSes / te "W" "made battle" against bis 
m quite as positive terms, Reynolds, Burke, Lord Charlemont 

noTf;r Hr e v eorg r f eev r aIso did > but L »»St3 

eavesdropper, talebearer, and babbhng spy. He had in this respe" 



chap, xvi.] THE CLUB. 431 

but one fault, as Goldsmith said of Hickey, but that one was a 
thumper. Even this fault, however, served for protection against 
his failings in other respects. He blabbed them all, as he blabbed 
everything else ; and his friends had ample notice to act on the 
defensive. He told Johnson one day that he was occasionally 
troubled with fits of stinginess. " Why, sir, so am I," returned 
Johnson, " but I do not tell it ;" and, mindful of the warning, he 
took care, the next time he borrowed sixpence, to guard himself 
against being dunned for it. "Bos well," he said, "lend me 
"sixpence — not to be repaid." 

The day fixed for Boswell's ballot was Friday the 30th of April, 
when Beauclerc invited him to dinner, at his new house in the 
Adelphi ; and among the members of the club assembled at Beau- 
clerc's as though to secure his election, were Johnson, Reynolds, 
Lord Charlemont, Yesey, and Langton. Goldsmith was not present ; 
but he was the after-dinner subject of conversation. They did not 
sit long, however ; but went off in a body to the club, leaving Bos - 
well at Beauclerc' s till the fate of his election should be announced 
to him. He sat in a state of anxiety, he tells us, which even the 
charming conversation of Lady Di Beauclerc could not entirely 
dissipate ; but in a short time he received the welcome tidings of 
his election, hastened to Gerrard-street, '' ' and was introduced to 
* ' such a society as can seldom be found. " He now for the first time 
saw Burke : and, at the same supper-table, sat Johnson, Garrick, 
and Goldsmith ; Mr. Jones and Doctor Nugent ; Reynolds, Lord 
Charlemont, Langton, Chamier, Yesey, and Beauclerc. As he 
entered, Johnson rose with gravity to acquit himself of a pledge to 
his fellow-members ; and, leaning on his chair as on a desk or pulpit, 
gave Bozzy a charge with humorous formality, pointing out the 
conduct expected from him as a good member of the club. A 
warning not to blab, or tattle, doubtless formed part of it ; and the 
injunction was on the whole not unfaithfully obeyed. "We owe to 
Langton, not to Boswell, the report of a capital bit of Johnson's 
criticism on this particular evening ; when, Goldsmith having 
produced a printed Ode which he had been hearing read by its author 
in a public room (at the rate of five shillings each for admission !), 
Johnson thus disposed of it : " Bolder words and more timorous 
I- meaning, I think, never were brought together." Only once, does 
any of the club-conversation appear to have been carried away, in 
detail, by Boswell ; and a portion of that report conveys so agreeably 
the unaffected social character of the Gerrard-street meetings, that 
it may fitly close such attempts as I have made to convey a picture 
,of this remarkable society. 

After ranging through every variety of subject, art, politics, 
I place-hunting, debating, languages, literature, public and private 



432 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

virtue (it was the night when Burke announced his famous judgment, 
that from all the large experience he had had, he had learnt to think I 

better of mankind), the conver- 
sation concluded thus. ' ' I uiir i 
" derstand," said Burke, " the 
" hogshead of claret which this 
" society was favoured 
,. ; lV tyT; ' " with by our friend the 
Vim- "dean" (Bar- 

nard) ' ' is nearly 
" out ; I think 
"he should be 
"written to, to 
"send another 
" of the same 




" kind. Let the request be made with a happy ambiguity ofj 
" expression, so that we may have the chance of his sending it also as 
"a present." "I am willing," observed Johnson, "to offer myf 
" services as secretary on this occasion.'' ' ' As many as are for Doctor 
"Johnson being secretary," cried another member, "holdup youi 



chap, xvi.] THE CLUB. 433 

hands. Carried unanimously." " He w'll be our dictator," said 
_ Boswell. "No," returned Johnson, "the company is to dictate to 
" me. I am only to write for wine; and I am quite disinterested, 
" as I drink none ; I shall not be suspected of having forged 
"the application. I am no more than humble scribe." " Then," 
interposed Burke, inveterate punster that he was, " you shall pre- 
" scribe." " Very well," cried Boswell ; " the first play of words 
" to-day." " ~No, no," interrupted Reynolds, recalling a previous 
bad pun of Burke's " the butts in Ireland." "Were I your dictator," 
resumed Johnson, ' ' you should have no wine. It would be my 
" business caver e ne quid detrimenti Bespublica caperet, and wine is 
" dangerous. Rome," he added smiling, "was ruined by luxury." 
" Then," protested Burke, " if you allow no wine as dictator, you 
" shall not have me for your master of the horse." The club lives 
again for us very pleasantly, in this good-humoured friendly talk. 

Six days after Boswell' s election, he was with Johnson, Gold- 
smith, and Langton, among the guests at the dinner table of 
booksellers Dilly in the Poultry. They were dissenters ; and had 
asked two ministers of their own persuasion, Doctor Mayo and Mr. 
Toplady, to meet their distinguished guests. The conversation 
first turning upon natural history, Goldsmith contributed to it some 
curious facts about the partial migrations of swallows (' ' the stronger 
u ones migrate, the others do not "), and on the subject of the 
nidification of birds seemed disposed to revive the old question 
of instinct and reason. ' ' Birds build by instinct," said Johnson ; 
" they never improve ; they build their first nest as well as any 
" one they ever build." " Yet we see," remarked Goldsmith, " if 
' ' you take away a bird's nest with the eggs in it, she will make a 
"slighter nest and lay again." "Sir," said Johnson, "that is 
' ' because at first she has full time and makes her nest deliberately. 
" In the case you mention she is pressed to lay, and must therefore 
"make her nest quickly." To which Goldsmith merely added that 
the nidification of birds was " what is least known in natural history, 
" though one of the most curious things in it." But this easy flow 
of instructive gossip did not satisfy Boswell. He saw a great 
opportunity, with two dissenting parsons present, of making John- 
son "rear" ; and so straightway "introduced the subject of 
' ' toleration. " Johnson and the dissenters disagreed of course ; and 
when they put to him, as a consequence of his argument, that the 
persecution of the first Christians must be held to have been perfectly 
right, he frankly declared himself ignorant of any better way of 
ascertaining the truth than by persecution on the one hand and 
endurance on the other. "But how is a man to act, sir?" asked 
Goldsmith at this point. " Though firmly convinced of the truth 
" of his doctrine, may he not think it wrong to expose himself to 

u 



434 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

"persecution ? Has he a right to do so ? Is it not, as it were, 
" committing voluntary suicide ? " "Sir, as to voluntary suicide, 
" as you call it," retorted Johnson, " there are twenty thousand 
" men who will go without scruple to be shot at, and mount a breach 
"for fivepence a-day." "But," persisted Goldsmith, "have they 
' ' a moral right to do this 1 " Johnson evaded the question by 
asserting that a man had better not expose himself to martyrdom 
who had any doubt about it. " He must be convinced that he 
"has a delegation from Heaven." "Nay," repeated Goldsmith, 
apparently unconscious that he was pressing disagreeably on John- 
son. ' ' I would consider whether there is the greater chance of 
" good or evil upon the whole. If I see a man who has fallen into 
" a well, I would wish to help him out ; but if there is a greater 
" probability that he shall pull me in, than that I shall pull him 
" out, I would not attempt it. So, were I to go to Turkey, I 
" might wish to convert the grand signior to the Christian 
' ' faith ; but when I considered that I should probably be put to 
" death without effectuating my purpose in any degree, I should 
"keep myself quiet." To this Johnson replied by enlarging 
on perfect and imperfect obligations, and by repeating that a man j 
to be a martyr, must be persuaded of a particular delegation from ' 
Heaven. "But how," still persisted Goldsmith, "is this to be I 
" known ? Our first reformers, who were burnt for not believing ' 
"bread and wine to be Christ — " "Sir," interrupted Johnson, 
loudly, and careless what unfounded assertion he threw out to j 
interrupt him, ' ' they were not burnt for not believing bread and | 
" wine to be Christ, but for insulting those who did." 

What with his dislike of reforming protestants and his impatience 
of contradiction, Johnson had now become excited to keep the 
field he had so recklessly seized, and in such manner that none 
should dispossess him. Goldsmith suffered accordingly. Boswell 
describes him during the resumption and continuation of the 
argument, into which Mayo and Toplady again resolutely plunged 
with their antagonist, sitting in restless agitation from a wish to 
get in and " shine ; " which certainly was no unnatural wish after , 
the unfair way he had been ousted. Finding himself still excluded, 
however, he had taken his hat to go away ; but yet remained with 
it for some time in his hand, like a gamester at the close of a long 
night, lingering still for a favourable opening to finish with 
success. Once he began to speak ; and found himself overpowered 
by the loud voice of Johnson, who was at the opposite end of the 
table, and did not perceive his attempt. "Thus disappointed of, 
" his wish to obtain the attention of the company," says Bo3well, 
" Goldsmith in a passion threw down his hat, looking angrily at 
" Johnson, and exclaiming in a bitter tone, Take it." At this 



chap, xvi.] THE CLUB. 435 

moment, Toplady being about to speak, and Johnson uttering 
some sound which led Goldsmith to think he was again beginning, 
and was taking the words from Toplady, " Sir," he exclaimed, 
venting his own envy and spleen, according to Boswell, under the 
pretext of supporting another person, " the gentleman has heard 
"you patiently for an hour; pray allow us now to hear him." 
" Sir," replied Johnson sternly, " I was not interrupting the 
" gentleman. I was only giving him a signal of my attention. 
r Sir, you are impertinent." Goldsmith made no reply, but con- 
tinued in the company for some time. He then left for the club. 

But it is very possible he had to call at Covent-garden on his 
way, and that for this, and not for Boswell's reason, he had taken 
his hat early. The actor who so served him in Young Marlow, 
Lee Lewes, was taking his benefit this seventh of May ; and, for 
an additional attraction, Goldsmith had written him the " occa- 
" sional " epilogue I formerly mentioned, which Lewes spoke in 
the character of Harlequin, and which was repeated (for the 
interest then awakened by the writer's recent death) at his benefit 
in the following year. But if he called at the theatre, his stay 
was brief ; for when Johnson, Langton, and Boswell appeared in 
Gerrard-street, they found him sitting with Burke, Garrick, and 
other members, " silently brooding," says Boswell, "over Johnson's 
"reprimand to him after dinner." Johnson saw how matters 
stood, and saying aside to Langton, "I'll make Goldsmith forgive 
" me," called to him in a loud voice, " Doctor Goldsmith ! some- 
" thing passed to-day where you and I dined : I ask your pardon." 
To which Goldsmith at once "placidly" answered, " It must be 
" much from you, sir, that I take ill." And so at once, Boswell 
adds, the difference was over, and they were on as easy terms as 
ever, and Goldy rattled away as usual. 

The whole story is to Goldsmith's honour. Not so did the 
reverend Percy or the reverend Warton show Christian temper, 
when the one was called insolent and the other uncivil ; not so 
could the courtly-bred Beauclerc or the country-bred Doctor Taylor 
restrain themselves, when Johnson roared them down ; not so the 
gentle Langton and unruffled Reynolds, when even they were 
called intemperate ; not so the historic Robertson, though com- 
paring such rebukes of the righteous to excellent oil which breaks 
not the head, nor the philosophic Burke, drily correcting the 
historian with a suggestion of " oil of vitriol ;" — not so, in short, 
with one single submissive exception, any one of the constant 
victims to that forcible spirit and impetuosity of manner, which, as 
the submissive victim admits, spared neither sex nor age. 

But Boswell was not content that the scene should have passed 
as it did. Two days after, he called to take leave of Goldsmith 

u2 



436 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. book iv. 

before returning to Scotland, and seems to Lave chafed, with Lis 
meddling loquacity, what remained of a natural soreness of feeling. 
He dwells accordingly with great unction, in his book, on the 
" jealousy and envy" which broke out at this interview, from a 
man who otherwise possessed so many "most amiable qualities ;"' 
and yet, in the same passage, is led to make the avowal that he 
does not think Goldsmith had more envy in him than other people. 
" In my opinion, however, Goldsmith had not more of it than 
" other people have, but only talked of it freely." He pursues 
the same subject later, where, in answer to a remark from Johnson 
about the envy of their friend, he defends him by observing that 
he owned it frankly on all occasions ; and is thus met by Johnson. 
"Sir, you are enforcing the charge. He had so much envy that 
"he could not conceal it." Dr. Beattie in like manner informs 
us : " He was the only person I ever knew who acknowledged 
"himself to be envious ;" to which let me add that Tom Davies 
makes a similar remark for himself, when he says, in a passage of 
his Life of Garrick which Johnson saw and approved before publica- 
tion, that he never knew any man but one who had the honesty 
and courage to confess he had envy in him, and that man was 
Doctor Johnson. Such are the inconsistencies in which we find 
ourselves on this subject, and which really reach their height, when, 
in reply to some pestering of Boswell's on the same eternal theme, 
Johnson goes so far as to say that vanity was so much the motive 
of Goldsmith's virtues as well as vices that it prevented his being 
a social man, so that " he never exchanged mind with you." 
As T have repeatedly illustrated in the course of this book, Gold- 
smith's faults lay on the ultra-social and communicative side. He 
was but too ready on all occasions to pour out whatever his mind 
contained, nor does it seem, as far as we may judge, that he 
was impatient of receiving like confidences from others. 

But his last interview with Boswell remains to be described. 
As the latter enlarged on his having secured Johnson for a visit 
to the Hebrides in the autumn, — an achievement which elsewhere 
he compared to that of a dog who had got hold of a large piece of 
meat, and run away with it to a corner where he might devour it 
in peace, without any fear of others taking it from him, — Gold- 
smith interrupted him with the impatient remark that "he would 
" be a dead weight for me to carry, and that I should never be! 
" able to lug him along through the Highlands and Hebrides. • 
Nor, Boswell continues, was he patiently allowed to enlarge upon 
Johnson's wonderful abilities ; for here Goldsmith broke in with 
that exclamation, " Is he like Burke, who winds into his subject 
" like a serpent," which drew forth the triumphant answer, " But; 
" Johnson is the Hercules who strangled serpents in his cradle," 



chap, xvi.] THE CLUB. 437 

seldom equalled for its ludicrous inaptness by even Bozzy himself. 
All which would be amusing enough, if it had rested there ; but, 
straight from the Temple, Boswelltook himself to Fleet-street, and, 
with repetition of what had passed, his common habit, no doubt 
revived Johnson's bitterness. For this had not wholly subsided even 
a week or two later, when, on Mrs. Thrale alluding to his future 
biographer, he asked, "And who will be my biographer, do you 
" think ?" "Goldsmith, no doubt," replied Mrs. Thrale ; "and he will 
" do it the best among us." " The dog would write it best, to be 
"sure," was Johnson's half-jesting half-bitter rejoinder, "but his 
" particular malice towards me, and general disregard of truth, would 
"make the book useless to all, and injurious to my character." 

Uttered carelessly enough, no doubt ("nobody, at times, talks 
" more laxly than I do," he said candidly to Boswell), and with 
small thought that his gay little mistress would turn authoress, 
and put it in a book ! What Mrs. Thrale herself adds, indeed, 
would hardly have been said, if Johnson had spoken at all 
seriously. " Oh ! as to that," said I, "we should all fasten upon 
" him, and force him to do you justice ; but the worst is, the 
"doctor does not know your life." Let such things, in short, be 
taken always with the wise comment which Johnson himself sup- 
plied to them, in an invaluable remark of his ten years later. 
" I am not an uncandid nor am I a severe man. I sometimes say 
" more than T mean, in jest ; and people are apt to believe me 
" serious. However, I am more candid than I was when I was 
" younger. As I know more of mankind, I expect less of them ; 
" and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms 
"than I was formerly." He loved Goldsmith when he so spoke 
of him, and had no doubt of Goldsmith's affection ; — but he 
spoke with momentary bitterness ; of the " something after death," 
whether a biography or matter more serious, he never spoke 
patiently ; and no man's quarrels, at all .times, had in them so 
much of lovers' quarrels. " Sir," he said to Boswell, with a falter- 
ing voice, when Beauclerc was in his last illness, " I would walk 
" to the extremity of the diameter of the earth to save Beauclerc :" 
yet with no one more bitterly than Beauclerc, did he altercate in 
moments of difference. Nor was his fervent tribute, ' ' The earth, 
" sir, does not bear a worthier man than Bennet Langton," less 
sincere, because one of his most favourite topics of talk to Boswell 
was the little weaknesses of their worthy friend. 

And now, approaching as I am to the conclusion of my book, 
let me take the opportunity of saying, that, with an admiration 
for Boswell's biography confirmed and extended by my late 
repeated study of it, I am more than ever convinced that not a 
few of those opinions of Johnson's put forth in it which appear 



438 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

most repulsive or extravagant, would for the most part lose that 
character if Boswell had accompanied them always with the pro- 
vocation or incitement under which they were delivered. But 
certainly he does not invariably do this, any more than he is at 
all times careful to distinguish when things are said in irony 
or jest. To illustrate my meaning, I quote a short passage from 
a conversation in which Boswell appears to have been boring 
Johnson by trying to prove that the highest sort of praise might 
yet, in particular circumstances, be resorted to without the 
suspicion of exaggeration. " Thus," he continues, " one might 
" say of Mr. Edmund Burke, he is a very wonderful man ; " to 
which Johnson retorted, "No, sir, you would not be safe, if 
' another man had a mind perversely to contradict. He might 
' answer, ' Where is all the wonder 1 Burke is, to be sure, a 
1 e man of uncommon abilities ; with a great quantity of matter 
' i in his mind, and a great fluency of language in his mouth. 
( ' But we are not to be stunned and astonished by him.' So you 
1 see, sir, even Burke would suffer, not from any fault of his own, 
' but from your folly." I cannot help regarding this last remark 
as the real clue to a great deal that offends against good taste in 
Boswell's extraordinary book. Men and things, — and poor Gold- 
smith and his affairs very prominently among both, — over and 
over again " suffer not from any fault of their own," but from 
Boswell's teasing, pertinacious, harassing, and foolish way of 
dragging them forward. He was always disregarding that excel- 
lent saying of Mrs. Thrale's, formerly quoted, in which she tells 
us that to praise anything, even what he liked, extravagantly, was 
generally displeasing to Johnson. Boswell himself was continually 
falling into this scrape ; and hence his own frequent confession 
that "it is not improbable that, if one had taken the other side, 
"he might have reasoned differently." The real truth was that, so 
long as, by any sort -or kind of pestering or of excitement, he 
elicited one of Johnson's peculiarities, the more harsh or decisive 
the better, he did not care what or who might be sacrificed in the 
process. If he could ever discover a tender place, on that he was 
sure to fix himself ; and any hesitation or misgiving about a par- 
ticular subject, was pretty sure to be turned the wrong way if he 
proceeded to meddle with it. In regard to Goldsmith, too, the mere 
prevalence of a suspicion that he would be Johnson's biographer 
was of course discomforting ; and there is doubtless some truth in 
Sir Walter Scott's suggestion, that "rivalry for Johnson's good 
"graces" in regard to this possible point of contention, might account 
for many of the impressions which Boswell, who naturally was 
neither an ill-natured nor an unjust man, received from such 
intercourse as he had with Johnson's earlier and older friend. 






chap, xvii.j DRUDGERY AND DEPRESSION. 439 



CHAPTEE XVII. 



DRUDGERY AND DEPRESSION. 1773. 

The first volume of the Grecian History appears to have been 

finished by Goldsmith soon after Boswell left London, and 

1 773 
Griffin, on behalf of the "trade," was then induced to ^45 

make further advances. An agreement dated on the 22nd 
of June, states 250L as the sum agreed and paid for the two 
volumes ; but from this payment had doubtless been deducted 
some part of the heavy debt for which the author was already in 
arrear. The rest of that debt it seemed hopeless to satisfy by 
mere drudgery of his own, never more than doubtfully rewarded 
at best ; and the idea now first occurred to poor Goldsmith of a 
work that he might edit, for which he might procure contributions 
from his friends, and in which, without any great labour of the 
pen, the mere influence of his name and repute might suffice to 
bring a liberal return. It is pleasant to find Garrick helping him 
in this, and the other acknowledging that service in most affec- 
tionate terms. Garrick had induced Doctor Burney to promise a 
paper on Music for the scheme, which was that of a Popular 
Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. 

In exertions with a view to this project, and in other persevering 
labours of the desk, the autumn came on. " Here," he said 
exultingly to Cradock, on the latter entering his chambers one 
morning. " are some of my best prose writings. I have been hard 
" at work ever since midnight, and I desire you to examine them. 
" They are intended for an introduction to a body of arts and 
" sciences." Cradock thought them excellent indeed, but for other 
admiration they have unluckily not survived. With these proofs 
of application, anecdotes of carelessness, of the disposition which 
makes so much of the shadow as well as sunshine of the Irish 
character, as usual alternate ; and Cradock relates that, on one 
occasion, he and Percy met by appointment in the Temple, at 
Goldsmith's special request, and found him gone away to Windsor, 
after leaving an earnest entreaty (with which they complied) that 
they would complete for him a half-finished proof of his Animated 
Nature, which lay upon his desk. His once trim chambers had 
then fallen into grievous disorder. Expensive volumes, which, as 
he says in his preface to the book just named, had sorely taxed his 
scanty resources, lay scattered about the tables, and tossing on the 



440 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. | 

floor. But of books he had never been careful. Hawkins relates 
that when engaged in his historical researches about music, Gold- 
smith told him some curious things one night at the club, which, 
having asked him to reduce to writing, he promised that he would, 
and desired Hawkins to call at his chambers for them ; when, on 
the latter doing so, he stepped into a closet and tore out of a 
printed book six leaves, containing the facts he had mentioned. 
The carelessness, however, was not of books only. Such money as 
he had might be seen lying exposed in drawers, to which his 
' ' occasional man-servant " would resort as a mere matter of course, 
for means to pay any small bill that happened to be applied for ; 
and on a visitor once pointing out the danger of this, " What my 
"dear friend," exclaimed Goldsmith, "do you take Dennis for a 
"tlrjef ? " One John Eyles had lately replaced Dennis ; and was 
become inheritor of the too tempting confidence reposed in his 
predecessor, at the time of Percy's visit to the Temple. 

The incident of that visit, I may add, shows us how fleeting the 
Rowley dispute had been ; and it was followed by a mark of renewed 
confidence from Goldsmith, which may also show the fitful des- 
pondency under which he was labouring at this time. He asked 
Percy to be his biographer ; told him he should leave him his 
papers ; dictated several incidents of his life to him ; and gave him 
a number of letters and manuscript materials, which were not 
afterwards so carefully preserved as they might have been. There 
is no doubt that his spirits were now unusually depressed and 
uncertain, and that his health had become visibly impaired. Even 
his temper failed him with his servants ; and bursts of passion, 
altogether strange in him, showed the disorder of his mind. These 
again he would repent and atone for on the instant ; so that his 
laundress, Mary Ginger, used to contend with John Eyles which of 
them on such occasions should first fall in his way, knowing well 
the profitable kindness that would follow the intemperate reproval. 
From such as now visited him, even men he had formerly most 
distrusted, he made little concealment of his affairs. ' ' I remember 
" him when, in his chambers in the Temple," says Cumberland, 
who had called upon him there, * ' he showed me the beginning of 
" his Animated Nature ; it was with a sigh, such as genius draws, 
' ' when hard necessity diverts it from its bent to drudge for bread, 
" and talk of birds and beasts and creeping things, which Pidcock's 
" showmen would have done as well." Cumberland had none of 
the necessities of the drudge, and his was not the life of the author 
militant. That he could eat his daily bread without performing 
some daily task to procure it, was a fact he made always very 
obvious, and was especially likely to impress on any drudge he was 
visiting. "You and I have very different motives for resorting to 



chap, xvii.] DRUDGERY AND DEPRESSION. 441 

P the stage. I write for money, and care little about farne," said 
Goldsmith sorrowfully. His own distress, too, had made even 
more acute, at this time, his sensibility to the distress of others. 
He was playing whist one evening at Sir William Chambers's, when, 
at a critical point of the game, he flung down his cards, ran hastily 
from the room into the street, as hastily returned, resumed his 
cards, and went on with the game. He had heard an unfortunate 
woman attempting to sing in the street ; and so did her half-singing, 
half-sobbing, pierce his heart, that he could not rest till he had 
relieved her, and sent her away. The other card-players had been 
conscious of the woman's voice, but not of the wretchedness in its 
tone which had so affected Goldsmith. 

It occurred to some friends to agitate the question of a pension 
for him. Wedderburne had talked somewhat largely, in his 
recent defence of Johnson's pension, of the resolve of the ministry 
no longer to restrict the bounty of the crown by political consider- 
ations, provided there was "distinction in the literary world, and 
"the prospect of approaching distress." No living writer now 
answered these conditions better than Goldsmith ; yet application 
on his behalf was met by firm refusal. His talent was not a 
marketable one. ' ' A late nobleman who had been a member of 
"several administrations," says poor Smollett, "observed to me 
" that one good writer was of more importance to the government 
"than twenty placemen in the House of Commons :" but the good 
writer must have the qualities of the placeman, to enable them to 
recognise his importance, or induce him to accept their livery. 
Let me give a notable instance of this, on which some light has 
been lately thrown. Few things could be adduced more characteris- 
tic of the time, or of that low esteem of literature with what were 
called the distinguished and well-bred people, to the illustration of 
which I have devoted so many pages of this biography, than a 
memorial in favour of one of the most worthless of hack-partizans, 
Shebbeare, which will be found in the Grenville Correspondence 
(ii. 271), and which absolutely availed to obtain for him his 
pension of 200L a year. It is signed by two peers, two baronets, 
seven county members, four members for towns, and the members 
for the City and the University of Oxford. It asks for a pension 
on two grounds. The first is "that he may be enabled to pursue 
" that laudable inclination which he has of manifesting his zeal for 
"the service of His Majesty and his government;" in other 
words, that a rascal should be bribed to support a corrupt adminis- 
tration. The second is that the memorialists ' ' have been informed 
" that the late Doctor Thomson, Pemberton, Johnson, Smollett, 
' ' Hume, Hill, Mallet, and others have had either pensions or 
"places granted them as Men of Letters," or they would not have 

u3 



442 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. ' 

" taken the liberty" to intercede for Slaebbeare. Shebbeare and 
Johnson ! Smollett and Mallet ! Hume and Hill ! how exquisite 
the impartiality of regard and estimation. It was false, too ; for 
poor Smollett's name never appeared in the pension list at all, and : 
Johnson, on his appearance in it at Michaelmas quarter 1763, had no 
worthier neighbour than " Mr. Wight, Ward's chymist, one quarter, 
"751," which name follows " Mr. Samuel Johnson one quarter, 75£. I 

It might seem almost incredible to assert, but it is the simple fact, 
that the most distinguished public recognition of literary merit made 
at this time was to Arthur Murphy, and to Hugh Kelly, the 
latter having been for some years in Government pay : but 
Goldsmith had declined the overtures which these men accepted. 
Such political feeling as he had shown in his English History, it is 
true, was decidedly anti-aristocratic : but though, with this, heji 
may have exhibited a strong leaning to the monarchy, he had yet 
neither the merit, which with the king was still a substitute for 
most other merit, of being a Scotchman ; nor even the merit, 
which might have done something to supply that defect, of con- 
cealing his general contempt for the ministers and politicians of the 
day. It requires no great stretch of fancy to suppose that such a' 
remark as this of Jack Lofty' s in the Good Natured Man, would not 
be extremely pleasant in great places. " Sincerely, don't you pity 
" us poor creatures in affairs ? Thus it is eternally : solicited for 
' ' places here, teazed for pensions there, and courted everywhere. 
" I know you pity me. Yes, I see you do ... . Waller, Waller, is 
"he of the house ? . . . . Oh, a modern poet ! We men of busi- 
ness despise the moderns ; and as for the ancients, we have no! 
' ' time to read them. Poetry is a pretty thing enough for our j 
" wives and daughters, but not for us. Why now, here I stand, 
1 ' that know nothing of books ; and yet, I believe, upon a land- 
" carriage fishery, a stamp-act, or a jaghire, I can talk by two 
"hours without feeling the want of them." Goldsmith could not 
have drawn a more exact portrait of the official celebrities, the 
ministers of state, of his time ; and they rewarded him as he 
probably expected. 

While the matter was still in discussion, there had come up to 
London, the Scotch professor, Beattie, who had written the some- 
what trumpery Essay on Truth to which I formerly adverted ; and 
which had eagerly been caught at, with avowed exaggeration of 
praise, as a mere battery of assault against the Voltaire and Hume 
philosophy. The object, such as it was, was a good one ; and 
though it could not make Beattie a tolerable philosopher, it made 
him, for the time, a very perfect social idol. He was supposed to 
have " avenged" insulted Christianity. "He is so caressed, and 
"invited, and treated, and liked, and flattered by the great, that 



chap, xvn.] DRUDGERY AND DEPRESSION. 443 

" I can see nothing of him," says Johnson. " Every one,'' says 
Mrs. Thrale, "loves Doctor Beattie but Goldsmith, who says he 
" cannot bear the sight of so much applause as we all bestow upon 
" him. Did he not tell us so himself, who could believe he was so 
"amazingly ill-natured?" Telling it thus, one half called him 
ill-natured ; and the other half, absurd. He certainly had the 
objection all to himself. " I have been but once at the club since you 
"left England," writes Beauclerc to Lord Charlemont ; "we were 
" entertained as usual by Doctor Goldsmith's absurdity. Mr. 
" Y[esey] can give you an account of it." Some harangue against 
Beattie, very probably ; for even the sarcastic Beau went with the 
rest of the "ale-house in Gerrard-street," as he calls the club, in 
support of the anti-infidel philosopher. What most vexed Gold- 
smith, however, was the adhesion of Reynolds. It was the only 
grave difference that had ever been between them ; and it is 
honourable to the poet that it should have arisen on the only 
incident in the painter's life which has somewhat tarnished his 
fame. Reynolds accompanied Beattie to Oxford, partook with 
him in an honorary doctorship of civil law, and on his return 
painted his fellow doctor in Oxonian robes, with the Essay on 
Truth under his arm, and at his side the angel of Truth over- 
powering and chasing away the demons of Infidelity, Sophistry, 
and Falsehood ; the last represented by the plump and broad- 
backed figure of Hume, the second by the lean and piercing face of 
Voltaire, and the first bearing something of a remote resemblance 
to Gibbon. ' ' It very ill becomes a man of your eminence and 
"character," said Goldsmith to Sir Joshua, and his fine rebuke 
will outlast the silly picture, "to debase so high a genius as 
" Voltaire before so mean a writer as Beattie. Beattie and his 
"book will be forgotten in ten years, while Voltaire's fame will 
" last for ever. Take care it does not perpetuate this picture, to 
"the shame of such a man as you." Reynolds, persisted, notwith- 
standing the protest ; but was incapable of any poor resentment of 
it. He produced, this same year, at Goldsmith's suggestion, his 
painting of Ugolino, founded on a head not originally painted for 
that subject, but which had struck Burke as well as Goldsmith to 
be eminently suited to it ; and their friendship, based as it was on 
sympathies connected with art as well as on strong private 
regard, knew no abatement. Beattie himself, however, was full of 
resentment. He called his critic a poor fretful creature, eaten up 
with affectation and envy ; yet he liked many things in his genius, 
he said, and (writing a year hence, when he had no more to fear 
from him) was "sorry to find last summer that he looked upon 
" me as a person who seemed to stand between him and his 
"interest." The allusion was to the pension; for which it was 



444 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

well known that Goldsmith, was an unsuccessful solicitor, and 
which had been granted unsolicited to Beattie. The king had 
sent for him, praised his Essay, and given him two hundred a year. 
Johnson welcomed the news in the Hebrides with his most vehe- 
ment expression of delight ; though, seeing he had quoted his 
favourite Traveller but three days before, till the ' ' tear started to 
"his eye," he might have thought somewhat of his other wipen- 
sioned friend, and clapped his hands less loudly. 

That the failure of hope in this direction should a little have 
soured and changed the unlucky petitioner, will hardly provoke 
surprise. He had hitherto taken small interest, and no part, in 
politics ; and his inclination, as far as it may be traced, had never 
been to the ministerial side. But he seems no longer to have 
scrupled to avow a decisive sympathy with the opposition ; and 
there is as little reason to doubt that he was now building frail 
hopes of some appointment through Lord Shelburne's interest. 
His personal knowledge of that able but wayward statesman gives 
some colour to the assertion ; and I have found, in a magazine 
published a few years after Goldsmith's death, a distinct state- 
ment confirming it, by one who evidently knew him well, and 
who adds that " the expectation contributed to involve him ; and 
" he often spoke with great asperity of his dependence on what he 
" called moonshine." Feeble as the light was, however, there are 
other proofs of his having followed it in these last melancholy 
months of his life. Lord Shelburne's member and protege, Town- 
shend, was at this time Lord Mayor of London ; and by his fiery 
liberalism, and really bold resolution, quite careless of those 
" Malagrida" taunts against his patron with which the sarcasm of 
Junius had supplied ministerial assailants, was now exasperating 
the Court to the last degree. Yet Goldsmith did not hesitate to 
praise the " patriotic magistrate," and to avow that he had done 
so. " Goldsmith, the other day," writes Beauclerc to Lord Charle- 
mont, ' ' put a paragraph into the newspapers, in praise of Lord 
" Mayor Townshend. The same night we happened to sit next 
" to Lord Shelburne, at Drury-lane. I mentioned the circum- 
" stance of the paragraph to him, and he said to Goldsmith, that 
" he hoped he had mentioned nothing about Malagrida in it. ' Do 
" 'you know,' answered Goldsmith, 'that I never could conceive 
" 'the reason why they call you Malagrida, for Malagrida was a 
" 'very good sort of man.' You see plainly what he meant to 
" say ; but that happy turn of expression is peculiar to himself. 
' ' Mr. Walpole says that this story is a picture of Goldsmith'* 
" whole life." 

Ah ! so it might seem to men whose whole life had been a 
holiday. No slavish drudgery, no clownish straits, no scholarly 



chap, xvn.] DRUDGERY AND DEPRESSION. 415 

loneliness, had befallen them ; and how to make allowance in 
others for disadvantages never felt by ourselves, is still the great 
problem for us all. Poor Goldsmith's blunder was only a false 
emphasis. He meant that he wondered Malagrida, being the 
name of a good sort of a man, should be used as a term of 
reproach. But his whole life was a false emphasis, says Walpole. 
In his sense, perhaps it was so. He had been emphatic throughout 
it, where Walpole had only been indifferent ; and what to the wit 
and man of fashion had been a scene for laughter, to the poet and 
man of letters had been fraught with serious suffering. " Life is 
" a comedy to those who think, and a tragedy to those who feel." 
Democritus laughed, and Heraclitus wept. 

Beauclerc told Lord Charlemont in the same letter just quoted, 
that Goldsmith had written a prologue for Mrs. Yates, which she 
was to speak that night at the Opera-house. "It is very good. 
' ' You will see it soon in all the newspapers, otherwise I would 
"send it to you." The newspapers have nevertheless been 
searched in vain for it, though it certainly was spoken ; and it 
seems probable that Colman's friends had interfered to suppress it. 
Mrs. Yates had quarrelled with the Covent-gardeh manager ; and 
one object of the " poetical exordium " which Goldsmith had thus 
written for her, was to put before that fashionable audience the 
injustice of her exclusion from the English theatre. He had 
great sympathy for Mrs. Yates, thinking her the first of English 
actresses ; and it is not wonderful that he should have lost all 
sympathy with Colman. Their breach had lately widened more 
and more. Kenrick, driven from Drury-lane, had found refuge at 
the other house ; and, on the very night of Mrs. Yates's prologue, 
Colman suffered a new comedy, by that libeller of all his friends, 
to be decisively damned at Covent-garden. If Goldsmith could 
have withdrawn both his comedies upon this, he would probably 
have done it ; for at once he made an effort to remove the first to 
Drury-lane, which he had now the right to do. But Garrick 
insisted on his original objection to Lofty ; and justified it by 
reference to the comparative coldness with which the comedy had 
been received during the run of She Stoops to Conquer in the 
summer, though with the zealous Lee Lewes in that part (Lewis 
had not yet assumed it). He would play the Good Natured Man 
if that objection could be obviated, not otherwise. Here the 
matter rested for a time. But in the course of what passed, 
Goldsmith found that Newbery had failed to observe his promise 
in connection with the unpaid bill still in Garrick' s hands. This 
was hardly generous ; since the copyright of She Stoops to Conquer 
had passed in satisfaction of all claims between them, and was 
already promising Newbery the ample profits which it subsequently 



446 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

realised beyond his debt. These are said to have amounted to 
upwards of three hundred pounds ; and the play was still so 
profitable after several years' sale, that when the booksellers 
engaged Johnson for their first scheme of an Edition and Memoir, 
the project was defeated by a dispute about the value of the copy- 
right of She Stoops to Conquer. 

The other larger debt to " the trade," which had suggested to 
Goldsmith his project of a Dictionary, he had now no means of 
discharging but by hard, drudging, unassisted labour. His so 
favourite project, though he had obtained promises of co-operation 
from Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds, had been finally rejected. 
Davies, who represented the craft on the occasion, whose own 
business had not been very prosperous, and many of whose copy- 
rights had already passed to Cadell, gives us the reason of their 
adverse decision. He says that though they had a very good 
opinion of the Doctor's abilities, yet they were startled at the 
bulk, importance, and expense of so great an undertaking, the 
fate of which was to depend upon the industry of a man with 
whose indolence of temper, and method of procrastination, they 
had long been acquainted. He adds, in further justification of 
the refusal, that upon every emergency half-a-dozen projects 
would present themselves to Goldsmith's mind, which, straightway 
communicated to the men they were to enrich, at once obtained 
him money on the mere faith of his great reputation : but the 
money was generally spent long before the new work was half 
finished, perhaps before it was begun ; and hence arose continual 
expostulation and reproach on the one side, and much anger and 
vehemence on the other. Johnson described the same transac- 
tions, after all were over, in one of his emphatic sentences. " He 
" had raised money and squandered it, by every artifice of acqui- 
" sition and folly of expense. But let not his frailties be remem- 
" bered : he was a very great man." 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



THE CLOUDS STILL GATHERING. 1773. 

The cherished project, then, of the Popular Dictionary of Arts 
and Sciences, the scheme on which Goldsmith had built so 

ml\k much, was an utter and quite hopeless failure ; and, under 
the immediate pang of feeling this, the alteration of his 

fisrt comedy for Garrick, even upon Garrick's own conditions, 



chap, xviii.] THE CLOUDS STILL GATHERING. 447 

would seem to have suddenly presented itself as one of those 
" artifices of acquisition" which Johnson alleges against him. He 
wrote to the manager of Drury-lane. The letter has by chance 
survived, is obligingly communicated to me by its present possessor, 
and of the scanty collection so preserved is probably the worst 
composed and the worst written. As well in the manner as in the 
matter of it, the writer's distress is very painfully visible. It has 
every appearance, even to the wafer hastily thrust into it, of having 
been the sudden suggestion of necessity ; it is addressed, without 
date of time or place, to the Adelphi (where Garrick had lately 
purchased the centre house of the newly built terrace) ; nor is it 
unlikely to have been delivered there by the messenger of a 
sponging-house. A fac-simile of its signature, which may be com- 
pared with Goldsmith's ordinary hand-writing in a previous page, 
will show the writer's agitation, and perhaps account for the vague 
distraction of his grammar. 

My Dear Sir, Your saying you would play my Good-natured Man makes 
me wish it. The money you advanced me upon Newbery's note I have the 
mortification to find is not yet paid, but he says he will in two or three days. 
What I mean by this letter is to lend me sixty pound for which I will give you 
Newbery's note, so that the whole of my debt will be an hundred for which 
you shall have Newbery's note as a security. This may be paid either from 
my alteration if my benefit should come to so much, but at any rate I will take 
care you shall not be a loser. I will give you a new character in my comedy 
and knock out Lofty which does not do, and will make such alterations as you 
direct. 









The letter is indorsed in Garrick' s handwriting as " Gold- 
" smith's parlaver." But though it would thus appear to have 
inspired little sympathy or confidence, and the sacrifice of Lofty 
had come too late and been too reluctant, Garrick' s answer, 
begged so earnestly, was not unfavourable. He evaded the altered 
c jmedy ; spoke of the new one already mentioned between them ; 
and offered the money required on Goldsmith's own acceptance. 
The small worth of the security of one of Newbery's notes (though 



448 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

the publisher, with his experience of the comedy in hand, would 
doubtless gladly have taken his chance of the renovated comedy), 
he had some time proved. Poor Goldsmith was enthusiastic in 
acknowledgment. Nor let it be thought he is acting unfairly to 
Newbery, in the advice he sends with his thanks. The publisher 
had frankly accepted the chances of a certain copyright, and had 
no right to wait the issue of those chances before he assumed the 
liability they imposed. The present note exhibits such manifest 
improvement in the writing as a sudden removal of a sore anxiety 
might occasion ; but the writer's usual epistolary neatness is still 
absent from it. It is hastily folded up in three-corner' d shape, is 
also sealed with wafer, and also indorsed by Garrick " Goldsmith's 
"parlaver." 

My Dear Friend, I thank you ! I wish I could do something to serve you. 
I shall have a comedy for you in a season or two at furthest that I believe will 
be worth your acceptance, for I fancy I will make it a fine thing. You shall 
have the refusal. I wish you would not take up Newbery's note but let Waller 
[probably a mistake for Wallis, Garrick' s solicitor] tease him, without however 
coming to extremities ; let him haggle after him and he will get it. He owes 
it and will pay it. I'm sorry you are ill. I will draw upon you one month 
after date for sixty pound and your acceptance will be ready money, part of 
which I want to go down to Barton with. May God preserve my honest little 
man, for he has my heart. Ever, Oliver Goldsmith. 

Barton was a gleam of sunshine in his darkest days. There, if 
no where else, he could still strive to be, as in his younger time, 
" well when he was not ill, and pleased when he was not angry." 
It was the precious maxim of Reynolds, as it had been the 
selectest wisdom of Sir William Temple. Reynolds himself, too, 
their temporary disagreement forgotten, gave him much of his 
society on his return : observing, as he said afterwards, the change 
in his manner ; seeing how greatly he now seemed to need the 
escape from his own thoughts, and with what a look of distress he 
would suddenly start from the midst of social scenes he continued 
still passionately fond of, to go home and brood over his misfor- 
tunes. Only two more pictures really gay or bright remain in the 
life of Goldsmith. The last but one is of himself and Sir Joshua 
at Vauxhall. And not the least memorable figures in that 
sauntering crowd, though it numbered princes and ambassadors 
then, — and on its tide and torrent of fashion, floated all the beauty 
of the time, — and through its lighted avenues of trees, glided 
cabinet ministers and their daughters, royal dukes and their wives, 
agreeable "young ladies and gentlemen of eighty-two," and all the 
red-heeled macaronies, — were those of the President, and the 
ancient history Professor, of the Royal Academy. A little later 
we trace Goldsmith from Vauxhall to the theatre, but any gaiety 



chap, xviii.] THE CLOUDS STILL GATHERING. 



449 



or enjoyment there is not so certain. Kelly had tried a fourth comedy 
(The School for Wives), nnder a feigned name, and with somewhat 

better success than its 
two immediate predeces- 
sors, though it lived but 




a few brief nights ; and Beauclerc, who writes to tell Lord Charle- 
mont of the round of pleasures Goldsmith and Joshua had been 
getting into, and which had prevented their attending the club, 



450 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

had told him also, but a few weeks before, that the new comedy- 
was almost killing the poor poet with spleen. Yet it had been at 
Beauclerc's own house, and on the very night when the comedy- 
was produced, that there shone forth the last laughter-moving 
picture I may dwell upon, in the chequered life now quickly draw- 
ing to its close. 

Goldsmith had been invited to pass the day there, with the 
Garricks, Lord and Lady Edgecumbe, and Horace Walpole ; and 
there seems to have been some promise that Garrick and himself 
were to amuse the company in the evening with a special piece of 
mirth, the precise nature of which was not disclosed. But unfor- 
tunately the new comedy was coming on at Drury-lane, and soon 
after dinner the great actor fell into a fidget to get to the theatre, 
and all had to consent to wait his return. He went away at half- 
past five, and did not re-appear till ten ; the rest meanwhile 
providing what present amusement they could, to relieve the 
dulness of amusement in expectancy. The burden fell on 
Walpole : and " most thoroughly tired I was," says that fastidious 
gentleman, "as I knew I should be, I who hate the playing off a 
" butt." Why this task should have been so fatiguing in the 
special case, Horace proceeds to explain by a peculiarity in the 
butt in question. "Goldsmith is a fool, the more tvearing for 
" having some sense." 

However, all fatigue has an end, and at last Garrick came back 
from the play, and the promised fun began. The player took a 
seat enveloped in a cloak, the poet sat down in his lap, and the 
cloak was so arranged as to cover the persons of both, excepting 
only Goldsmith's head and Garrick's arms, which seemed no 
longer to belong to separate bodies, but to be part of one and the 
same. Then, from the head, issued one of the gravest heroic 
speeches out of Addison's Cato, while the arms made nonsense of 
every solemn phrase by gestures the most extravagantly humorous 
and inappropriate. It is a never failing effect of the broadest 
comedy, in the hands of very ordinary performers ; and, with such 
action as Garrick's to burlesque the brogue and gravity of Gold- 
smith, must surely have been irresistible. The reader who has any 
experience of Christmas games, will doubtless remember having given 
in his own time many a laugh to this " Signor Mufti," as personated 
on that Christmas night eighty years ago. Mrs. Gwatkin, Sir 
Joshua Reynolds's younger niece, told also what she had seen of it, 
as personated by the same actors, to Mr. Haydon, who related it 
in his diary long before Horace Walpole's anecdote was published. 
" The most delightful man," according to the old lady's account 
to Haydon, when she was gathering up the memories of her 
youth, " was Goldsmith. She saw him and Garrick keep an 



chap, xviii.] THE CLOUDS STILL GATHERING. 451 

" immense party laughing till they shrieked. Garrick sat on 
" Goldsmith's knee; a table-cloth was pinned under Garrick's chin, 
" and brought behind Goldsmith, hiding both their figures. Garrick 
"then spoke, in his finest style, Hamlet's speech to his father's 
"ghost. Goldsmith put out his hands on each side of the cloth, 
' ' and made burlesque action, tapping his heart, and putting his 
"hand to Garrick's head and nose, all at the wrong time." Here 
the reader will observe, the actors had not only reversed their 
parts, but were rejoicing in a better audience than they appear to 
have had at Beauclerc's. "For how could one laugh," protests 
Horace Walpole, after describing the thing as he saw it there, 
"when one had expected this for four hours?" So perhaps he, 
and Beauclerc, and Lord Edgecumbe fell back once again on what 
this had interrupted, and closed up the night with the pleasanter 
mirth of playing off head and arms in a more mischievous game. 
"It was the night of a new comedy," says Walpole, "called the 
" School for Wives, whicn was exceedingly applauded, and which 
' ' Charles Fox says is execrable. Garrick had at least the chief 
" hand in it ; and T never saw anybody in a greater fidget, nor 
" more vain when he returned." Here, then, with Garrick full of 
the glories of a new play, in some degree aimed against the 
broadly-laughing school of Goldsmith, — its author publicly reported 
to be Major (afterwards Sir William) Addington, and by some 
suspected to be Horace Walpole himself, — its first night's success 
already half-threatening a sudden blight to the hard-won laurels of 
Young Marlow and Tony Lumpkin, — here surely were all the 
materials of undeniable sport ; and who will doubt that such a 
joke, if started, was in such company more eagerly enjoyed than 
the other more harmless Christmas game ? or that the courtly and 
sarcastic Beauclerc was not only too happy in the opportunity it 
afterwards gave him of writing to his noble correspondent : " We 
"have a new comedy here which is good for nothing ; bad as it 
"is, however, it succeeds very well, and almost killed Goldsmith 
"with envy." 

Cradock's account of what was really killing him is somewhat 
different from Beauclerc's, and will perhaps be thought more 
authentic. Although, according to the same letter of the Beau's, 
all the world but himself and a million of vulgar people were 
then in the country, Cradock had come up to town to place his 
wife under the care of a dentist, and had taken lodgings in 
Norfolk-street to be near his friend. He found Goldsmith much 
altered, he says ; at times, indeed, very low ; and he passed his 
mornings with him. He induced him once to dine in Norfolk- 
street ; but his usual cheerfulness had gone, " and all was forced." 
The idea occurred to Cradock that money might be raised by a 



452 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

special subscription-edition of the Traveller and Deserted Village, 
if consent could be obtained from the holders of the copyrights. 
"Pray do what you please with them," said Goldsmith, sadly. 
But he rather submitted, than encouraged, says Cradock ; and the 
scheme fell to the ground. " Oh, sir," said two sisters named 
Gun, milliners, who lived at the corner of Temple-lane, and were 
among Goldsmith's creditors, "sooner persuade him to let us 
" work for him gratis, than suffer him to apply to any other. We 
"are sure that he will pay us if he can." Cradock ends his 
melancholy narrative by expressing his conviction that, if Gold- 
smith had freely laid open all the debts for which he was then 
responsible, his zealous friends were so numerous that they would 
as freely have contributed to his relief. There is reason to presume 
as much of Reynolds, certainly ; and that he had even offered his 
aid. " I mean," Cradock adds, "here explicitly to assert only, 
' ' that I believe he died miserable, and that his friends were 
"not entirely aware of his distress." Truly, it was to assert 
enough. 



CHAPTEE XIX. 



RETALIATION. 1773-1774. 

Yet, before this delightful writer died, and from the depth of 
the distress in which his labours, struggles, and enjoyments 
a,, ' ,1 left him, his genius flashed forth once more. Johnson had 
returned to town after his three months' tour in the Hebrides ; 
parliament had again brought Burke to town ; Richard Burke was 
in London on the eve of his return to Grenada ; the old dining 
party had resumed their meetings at the St. James' coffee-house, 
and out of these meetings sprang Retaliation. More than one 
writer has professed to describe the particular scene from which 
it immediately arose, but their accounts are not always to be 
reconciled with what is certainly known. The poem itself, how- 
ever, with what was prefixed to it when published, sufficiently 
explains its own origin. What had formerly been abrupt and 
strange in Goldsmith's manners had now so visibly increased, as to 
become matter of increased sport to such as were ignorant of its 
cause ; and a proposition, made at one of the dinners when he was 
absent, to write a series of epitaphs upon him (" his country, 
"dialect, and person," were common themes of wit), was put in 
practice by several of the guests. The active aggressors appear tq, 
have been Garrick, Doctor Barnard, Richard Burke, and Caleb 



chap, xrx.] RETALIATION. 453 

Wliitefoord. Cumberland says he, too, wrote an epitaph ; but it 
was complimentary and grave, closing with a line to the effect that 
" all mourn the poet, I lament the man ;" and hence the grateful 
return he received. None were actually preserved (I mean of 
those that had given the provocation ; the ex post-facto specimens 
are countless) but Garrick's ; yet it will indicate what was doubt- 
less, unless the exception of Cumberland be admitted, the tone 
of all. 

Here lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness call'd Noll, 
Who wrote like an angel, but talk'd like poor Poll. 

This is said to have been spoken at once, while the rest were 
read to Goldsmith when he next appeared at the St. James' coffee- 
house. " The Doctor was called on for Retaliation," says the 
friend who published the poem with that name, " and at their 
"next meeting produced the follow ing, which I think adds one 
"leaf to his immortal wreath." It is possible he may have been 
ashed to retaliate, but not likely ; very certainly, however, the 
complete poem was not produced at the next meeting. It was 
unfinished when the writer died. But fragments of it, as written 
from time to time, appear to have been handed about, and read at 
the St. James' coffee-house ; and it is pretty clear that not only the 
masterly lines on Garrick were known some time before the others, 
but that the opening verses, in which the proposed subjects of his 
pleasant satire are set forth as the various dishes in a banquet, 
were among the earliest so read. The course which the affair then 
took seems to have been, that the writers of the original epitaphs 
thought it prudent so far to protect themselves against an enemy 
more formidable than at first they had supposed they were pro- 
voking, by fresh epitaphs more carefully written, and in a more 
conciliatory spirit. Thus two sets of jeux oV esprit arose, of which 
only the last have been preserved ; and this explains a contradiction 
apparent in almost all the accounts given by the actors in the 
affair, who would have us believe that verses evidently suggested 
by at least the opening lines of Retaliation, were no other than 
those which originally provoked and suggested that poem. 

Garrick's description, written as a preface to an intended col- 
lection of all the verses of the various writers, has been 
lately printed for the first time in Mr. Cunningham's jj, /„ 
excellent edition of the Works, and runs thus : 

As the cause of writing the following printed poem called Retaliation has not 
yet been fully explained, a person concerned in the business begs leave to give 
the following just and minute account of the whole affair. At a meeting of a 
company of gentlemen, who were well known to each other, and diverting 
themselves, among many other things, with the peculiar oddities of Dr. Grold- 
'"smith, who never would allow a superior in any art, from writing poetry down 



454 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

to dancing a hornpipe, the Doctor with great eagerness insisted upon trying his 
epigrammatic powers with Mr. Garrick, and each of them was to write the 
other's epitaph. Mr. Garrick immediately said that his epitaph was finished, 
and spoke the following distich extempore [as above given, and, except that 
' ' and " is substituted for ' ' but " in the second line, as first printed in a 
memoir of Caleb Whitefoord, in the 57th volume of the European Magazine]. 
Goldsmith, upon the company's laughing very heartily, grew very thoughtful, 
and either would not, or could not, write anything at that time : however, he 
went to work, and some weeks after produced the following printed poem called 
Retaliation, which has been much admired, and gone through several editions. 
The publick in general have been mistaken in imagining that this poem was 
written in anger by the Doctor ; it was just the contrary ; the whole on all 
sides was done with the greatest good humour ; and the following poems in 
manuscript were written by several of the gentlemen on purpose to provoke the 
Doctor to an answer, which came forth at last with great credit to him in 
Retaliation. 

Nothing is so certain as that the Doctor had already been pro- 
voked before the poems were so written, and that more especially 
the lines on Garrick himself had been handed about before his 
second elaborate epitaph was composed, though this also was 
finished before Retaliation assumed even the form in which it was 
left at its author's death. The account given by Cumberland 
does not greatly differ from Garrick's, but he describes the pro- 
position to write extempore epitaphs as not directed against 
Goldsmith specifically, but embracing "the parties present." 

Pen and ink were called for, and Garrick off-hand wrote an epitaph with 
a great deal of humour upon poor Goldsmith, who was the first in jest, as 
he proved to be in reality, that we committed to the grave. The Dean also 
gave him an epitaph, and Sir Joshua illuminated the Dean's, verses with a 
sketch of his bust in pen and ink, inimitably caricatured. Neither Johnson 
nor Burke wrote anything, and when I perceived Oliver was rather sore, and 
seemed to watch me with that kind of attention which indicated his expectation 
of something in the same kind of burlesque with theirs, I thought it time to 
press the joke no further, and wrote a few couplets at a side table, which when 
I had finished and was called upon by the company to exhibit, Goldsmith with 
much agitation besought me to spare him, and I was about to tear them, when 
Johnson wrested them out of my hand, and in a loud voice read them at the 
table. I have now lost all recollection of them, and in fact they were little 
worth remembering, but as they were serious and complimentary, the effect 
they had upon Goldsmith was the more pleasing for being so entirely unex- 
pected. . . At our next meeting he produced his epitaphs. . . As he had 
served up the company under the similitude of various sorts of meat, I had in 
the mean time figured them under that of liquors. . . Goldsmith sickened and 
died, and we had one concluding meeting at my house, when it was decided to 
publish his Retaliation. 

The obvious defect in all these descriptions is, that the various 
meetings are carelessly jumbled together, and that incidents, which 
would be easily understood if separately related, become mixed up 
in a manner quite unintelligible. But an unpublished letter of 



chap, xix.] RETALIATION. 455 

Cumberland's to Garrick is now before me, which seems, to a great 
extent, to confirm what has been quoted. It was probably written 
after Goldsmith's death (the epitaph- writing thus set on foot con- 
tinued till after Retaliation was published), for, besides the meeting 
to which it more immediately refers, it appears to describe retro- 
spectively what had taken place when Cumberland's "liquor" 
verses were first produced, and this may have been done in answer 
to some question put by Garrick with a view to that proposed 
collection of all the poems to which his statement was meant to be 
the preface. 

Be this as it may, the letter is highly characteristic. Here, as 
in everything of Cumberland's, ifc is most amusing to see to what 
an alarming extent he and his affairs, his writings, or the writings 
of which he is the object, occupy the scene. One might imagine, 
in reading it, that it was Richard Cumberland who had given all 
its interest to an incident which, but for Goldsmith, would not 
have lived in memory for a day. It is not as the author of his 
own immortal epitaphs, but simply as the recitator acerbus of 
Cumberland's temporary trash, that Goldsmith is prominent here ! 

We missed your society much on Wednesday last, and I may say to me in 
particular it was a singular loss, for in your place there came Mr. Whitefoord 
with, his pockets crammed with epitaphs. Two of them did me honour, and by 
implication yourself ; as the turn of both was a mock lamentation over me from 
you, with a most severe and ill-natured InvecUve principally collected from the 
strictures of Mr. Bickerstaff, and thrown upon me with a dung-fork. But of 
myself and Mm, enough. Doctor Goldsmith's Dinner was very ingenious, but 
evidently written with haste and negligence. The Dishes were nothing to the 
purpose, but they were followed by epitaphs that had humour,, some satire and 
more panegyric. You had your share of both, but the former very sparingly, 
and in a strain to leave nothing behind, not at all in the character of Mr. White- 
foord's muse. My wine was drank very cordially, though it was very ill-poured 
out by Doctor Goldsmith, who proved himself a recitator acerbus. The Dean 
of Derry* went out and produced an exceedingly good extempore in answer to my 
Wine, which had an excellent effect. Mr. Beauclerc was there, and joined with 
every one else in condemning the tenor of Mr. Whitefoord's invective, who, I 
believe, was 'brought maliciously enough by £Sir Joshua. 

Cumberland characterises the famous epitaph on Garrick not 
unfairly. This was a subject which the author of Retaliation had 
studied thoroughly ; most familiar had he good reason to be with 
its lights and its shadows ; very ample and various had been his 
personal experience of both ; and whether anger or adulation 
should at last predominate, the reader of this narrative of his life 
has had abundant means of determining. But neither were visible in 
the character of Garrick. Indignation makes verses, says the poet ; 
yet will the verses be all the better, in proportion as the indigna- 
tion is not seen. The hues on Garrick are quite perfect writing. 
Without anger, the satire is finished, keen, and uncompromising ; 



456 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

the wit is adorned by most discriminating praise ; and the truth 
is all the more merciless for exquisite good manners and good 
taste. The epitaph writers might well be alarmed. Garrick re- 
turned to the charge, with a nervous desire to re-retaliate ; and 
elaborated a longer and more malicious epitaph with some undoubt- 
edly clever lines in it, which he afterwards did not scruple to read 
to his friends (among them to poet laureate Pye and his wife) as 
having preceded and given occasion for Goldsmith's. Several of 
the other assailants submissively deprecated Goldsmith's wrath, in 
verses that still exist ; and the flutter of fear became very percep- 
tible. "Retaliation" says Sir Walter Scott, "had the effect 
" of placing the author on a more equal footing with his society 
"than he had ever before assumed." Fear might doubtless have 
had that effect, if Goldsmith could have visited St. James'-street 
again : but a sterner invitation awaited him. Allusions to Kenrick 
show that he was still writing his retaliatory epitaphs in the middle of 
February ; such of them as escaped during composition were limited 
to very few of his acquaintance ; and when the publication of the 
poem challenged wider respect for the writer, the writer had been 
a week in his grave. 

Other brief passages of the poem which were handed about at 
the same time with the character of Garrick, Burke is said to have 
received under solemn injunctions of secrecy ; which he promised 
to observe if they had passed into no other hands, but from 
which he released himself with all despatch when told that 
Mrs. Cholmondeley had also received a copy. It would be curious 
to know if, in the manuscript confided to him, he found that 
imaginary epitaph in which his own entire career as well as 
character was expressed, in which with a singular forecast the future 
was all seen from the present, and the loftiest admiration only 
served with exquisite art to indicate defects which were to spring, as 
too surely and soon they did, from the very wealth and exuberance 
of his genius. As clearly as we, who are now able to measure by the 
uses to which the practical philosophy of his politics is still available, 
the nobler political uses to which, while he lived, he might have 
applied such genius, had Goldsmith's penetration already discovered 
that its limited service was the certain proof of its misdirection. 
Already, even thus early in his history, there was one friend who 
was able to pierce through the over-refmings of his intellect to its 
unavailing and unpractical issues. And among all the men in 
familiar intercourse with him, or belonging to the society of which 
he was the leading ornament, he was here first to be told the truth 
by that member of the circle whose opinions on such a theme 
perhaps all would have hailed with laughter. Burke was only upon 
the threshold of his troubled though great career ; he had yet to live 



chap. xix. RETALIATION. 457 

twenty-seven years of successes in every means employed, and of 
failures in every object sought ; when Goldsmith conceived and 
wrote the imaginary epitaph in Retaliation. But its truth was pro- 
phetic. Through the exquisite levity of its tone appeared a weight 
and seriousness of thought, which was found applicable to every 
after movement in Burke's later life ; and which now confirms as 
by the judgment of his time, the unsparing verdicts of history. 

Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such, 
We scarcely can praise it, or blame it, too much ; 
Who, born for the universe, narrow' d his mind, 
And to party gave up what .was meant for mankind .... 
Though equal to all things, for all things unfit : 
Too nice for a statesman ; too proud for a wit .... 
In short 'twas his fate, unemploy'd, or in place, sir, 
To eat mutton cold, and cut blocks with a razor. 

Do we need other proof that the plan of the poem had grown 
far beyond its original purpose, as, " with chaos and blunders 
encircling his head," poor Goldsmith continued to work at it ? 
It became something better than "retaliation." And so, in its 
last lines, on which he is said to have been engaged when his fatal 
illness seized him, may be read the gratitude of a life. They 
will help to keep Reynolds immortal. 

Here Reynolds is laid, and, to tell you my mind, 
He- has not left a wiser or better behind. 
His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand : 
His manners were gentle, complying, and bland ; 
Still born to improve us in every part, 
His pencil our faces, his manners our heart. 
To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering, 
When they judged without skill he was still hard of hearing : 
When they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff, 
• He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff. 
By flattery unspoiled .... 

It is not unpleasing to think that Goldsmith's hand should have 
been tracing that unfinished line when illness struck the pen from 
it for ever. It was in the middle of March 1774. Some little 
time before, he had gone to his Edgeware lodging, to pursue his 
labours undisturbed. Here, at length, he had finished the Animated 
Nature ; and the last letter which remains of all that have come 
down to us, characteristic of his whole life, was written concerning 
that book to a publisher, Mr. Nourse, who had bought Griffin's 
original interest. It asked him to allow "his friend Griffin" to 
purchase back a portion of the copyright ; thanked him, at the 
same time, for an "over-payment," which in consideration of the 
completed manuscript, and its writer's necessities, Mr. Nourse had 
consented to make ; and threw out an idea of extending the work 

x 



458 OLIVEE GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. ffl 

into the vegetable and fossil kingdoms. Always working, always 
wanting, still asking, and hoping, and planning put fresh labour ! 
Here, too, he was completing the Grecian History ; making another 
Abridgement of English History for schools ; translating Scarron's 
Comic Romance; revising, for the moderate payment of five guineas 
vouchsafed by James Dodsley, and with the further condition that 
he was to put his name to it, a new edition of his Enquiry into 
Polite Learning ; labouring to bring into shape the compilation on 
Experimental Philosophy, which had been begun eight years before , 
writing his Retaliation; and making new resolves for the future. 
Such was the end, such the unwearying and sordid toil, to which 
even his six years' term of established fame had brought him ! 
The cycle of his life was complete ; and in the same miserable 
labour wherein it had begun, it was to close. 

Not without "resolving" to the last, and still hoping to begin 
anew. " His numerous friends," wrote Walpole to Mason, referring 
to this period of his life three days after its sudden close, " ne- 
" glected him shamefully at last, as if they had no business with 
" him when it was too serious to laugh. He had lately written 
" epitaphs for them all, some of which hurt, and perhaps made 
" them not sorry that his own was the first necessary." I do not 
know what excuse may have been given for this piece of scandal, 
but it is certain that Goldsmith had bitterly felt a reproach which 
Johnson gave him at their latest interview before leaving London, 
when, having asked him and Reynolds to dinner at the Temple to 
meet an old acquaintance to whom his Dictionary project had re- 
introduced him (Doctor Kippis, who tells the anecdote), Johnson 
silently reproved the extravagance of a too expensive dinner, by 
sending away a whole " second course" untouched. 

Soon after that, he was taking measures to sell the lease of his 
Temple chambers ; and here, in Edgeware, he was telling his farmer 
friends that he should never again live longer than two months a 
year in London. " One has a strange propensity," says Boswell, 
describing a perpetual habj.t of his own, "to fix upon some point 
"of time from whence a better course of life may begin." Ah, 
yes ! It is so easy to settle that way what would otherwise never 
be settled, and comfort ourselves with a flattery of the future. 
We seem mended at once, without having taken the trouble of 
mending. Unhappily it is from the same instinctive dislike of 
trouble that the after-failures of these formal resolutions come. 
Never will they cease, notwithstanding, till castle-building on the 
ground is as easy as to build castles in the air. The philosopher 
smiles at that word never, but to the last moment it is pronounced 
by us all. Here it was whispering to Goldsmith all sorts of en- 
during resolutions, when the sudden attack of an old illness 



chap, xx.] ILLNESS AND DEATH. 459 

warned him to seek advice in London. This was a local disorder, 
a strangury, which had grown from sedentary habits, and had re- 
quired great care at every period of his life. It was neglect, says 
Davies, which now brought it on. He describes it as occasioned 
by "a continual vexation of mind, arising from his involved 
" circumstances ; " and adds, " Death, I really believe was welcome 
" to a man of his great sensibility." In that case, the welcome visitor 
was come. 



CHAPTER XX. 



ILLNESS AND DEATH. 1774. 

Goldsmith arrived in London in the middle of March, and 
obtained relief from the immediate attack of his disease, 
but was left struggling with symptoms of low nervous jj, .„ 
fever. Yet he was again among his friends, and in the old 
haunts ; and his cordial and close relations with the Horneck 
family (as may be seen in the proceedings for Charles Horneek ? s 
divorce) appear in the very last traces left of him in the world. 
On Friday, the 25th of March, he seems to have been especially 
anxious to attend the club (Charles Fox, Sir Charles Bunbury, 
George Steevens, and Doctor George Fordyce had just obtained 
their election) ; but in the afternoon of that day he took to his bed, 
and at eleven o'clock at night a very benevolent as well as skilful 
surgeon-apothecary, named Hawes, who lived in the Strand, whom 
Goldsmith was in the habit of consulting, and to whose efforts to 
establish a Humane Society he had given active sympathy and 
assistance, was sent for. He found Goldsmith complaining of 
violent pain, extending over all the forepart of his head ; his 
tongue moist, his pulse at nmety, and his mind made up that he 
should be cured by James's fever-powders. He had derived such 
benefit from this fashionable medicine in previous attacks, that it 
seems to have left him with as obstinate a sense of its universal 
efficacy as Horace Walpole had, who swore he should take it if the 
house were on fire. Mr. Hawes saw at once, however, that, his 
complaint being more of a nervous affection than a febrile disease, 
such a remedy would be dangerous ; that it would force too large 
and sudden an exhaustion of the vital powers, to enable him to 
cope with the disorder ; and he implored him not to think of it. 
For more than half an hour, he says, he sat by the bed-side urging 
its probable danger; "vehemently entreating" his difficult 
patient : but unable to prevail upon him to promise that he would 

X2 



460 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

not resort to it. Hawes then, after formal protest, said he had 
one request to make of him. " He very warmly asked me "what 
"that was." It was that he would permit his friend Doctor For- 
dyce, who had formerly attended him, to be called in at once. He 
held out against this for some time ; endeavoured to raise an 
obstacle by saying Fordyce was gone to spend the evening in Ger- 
rard-street (" where," poor Goldsmith added, "I should also have 
"been if I had not been indisposed") ; and at last reluctantly 
consented. "Well, you may send for him, if you will." Hawes 
dispatched the note to Gerrard-street ; and Fordyce, arriving soon 
after Hawes had left, seems to have given Goldsmith a warning 
against the fever-medicine as strong, but as unavailing. Hawes 
sent medicine and leeches soon after twelve ; and, in the hope 
that Fordyce would have succeeded where he had failed, did not 
send the fever-powders ordered. But Goldsmith continued obsti- 
nate. The leeches were applied, the medicine rejected, and the 
lad who brought them both from Hawes's surgery was sent back 
for a packet of the powders. 

So far, in substance, is the narrative of Hawes ; which there 
is no ground for disputing. I omit everything not strictly 
descriptive of the illness ; but the good surgeon had evidently a 
strong regard for his patient. Other facts, in what remains to be 
told, appeared in formal statements subsequently published by 
Francis JSewbery, the proprietor of the fever-powders, to vindicate 
the fame of his medicine. These were made and signed by Gold- 
smith's servant, John Eyles ; his laundress, Mary Ginger ; and a 
night nurse, Sarah Smith, called in on the second day of the ill- 
ness. As soon as Goldsmith took the powder sent him from the 
Strand, he protested it was the wrong powder ; was very angry 
with Hawes ; threatened to pay his bill next day, and have done 
with him ; and certainly dispatched Eyles, in the afternoon of that 
day, for a fresh packet from Newbery's. He sent at the same time 
for his laundress (she was wife of the head-porter of the Temple), 
to " come and sit by him, until John returned ;" described him- 
self, when she arrived, as worse ; and damned Hawes (" those 
" were his very words") for the mistake he had made. In the 
afternoon and night of Saturday, two of the fresh powders were 
administered, one by the servant, the other by the nurse. The 
nurse was also dispatched for another apothecary, named Maxwell, 
living near St. Dunstan's church, who came, but declined to act as 
matters then stood ; and from that time "the patient followed the 
" advice of his physicians." He was too ill to make further resis- 
tance. Such is the substance of the evidence of the servants ; in 
which a somewhat exaggerated form was given to what might in 
itself be substantially true, yet in no way affect the veracity of 



chap, xx.] ILLNESS AND DEATH. 461 

Mr. Hawes. If Goldsmith asserted that a wrong powder had been 
sent, the sudden impulse to think so was not perhaps unnatural, 
after the course he had unwisely persisted in ; but that Hawes 
really made the mistake, is not credible. Reynolds and Burke 
made later investigation, and wholly acquitted him ; a recent 
inquirer and intelligent practitioner, Mr. White Cooper, confirms 
strongly the opinion on which he seems to have acted ; nor did 
poor Goldsmith himself very long adhere to the charge he had 
made. 

Mr. Hawes (the substance of whose brief narrative I resume, 
with such illustrations as other sources have supplied) did not see 
his patient when he called on Saturday morning. " His master was 
" dozing, he lay very quiet," was the announcement of Eyles. He 
called again at night ; when, " with great appearance of concern," 
the man told him that everything was worse. Hawes went in, 
and found Goldsmith extremely exhausted and reduced, his pulse 
very quick and small ; and on inquiring how he did, " he sighed 
" deeply, and in a very low voice said he wished he had taken my 
" friendly advice last night." To other questions he made no 
answer. He was so weak and low that he had neither strength 
nor spirit to speak. There was now, clearly, danger of the worst ; 
and Fordyce next day proposed to call another physician, naming 
Doctor Turton, into consultation. Goldsmith's consent was ob- 
tained to this step at eight o'clock on Monday morning, and 
Hawes retired altogether from attendance. The patient had again 
passed a very bad night, " and lay absolutely sunk with weakness." 
Fordyce and Turton met that day ; and continued their consul- 
tations twice daily, till all was over. 

A week passed : the symptoms so fluctuating in the course of 
it, and the evidence of active disease so manifestly declining, that 
even sanguine expectations of recovery would appear to have been 
at one time entertained. But Goldsmith could not sleep. His 
reason seemed clear ; what he said was always perfectly sensible ; 
" he was at times even cheerful;" but sleep had deserted him, 
his appetite was gone, and it became obvious, in the state of weak- 
ness to which he had been reduced, that want of sleep might in 
itself be fatal. It then occurred to Doctor Turton to put a very 
pregnant question to his patient. "Your pulse," he said, "is in 
" greater disorder than it should be, from the degree of fever 
"which you have. Is your mind at ease?" c ' No, it is not," 
was Goldsmith's melancholy answer. They are the last words we 
are to hear him utter in this world. The end arrived suddenly and 
unexpectedly. He lay in the sound and calm sleep which so 
anxiously had been looked for, at midnight on Sunday the 3rd 
of April ; his respiration was easy and natural, his skin warm and 



462 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

moist, and the favourable turn was thought to have come. But 
at four o'clock in the morning the apothecary Maxwell was called 
up in haste, and found him in strong convulsions. These continued 
without intermission ; he sank rapidly ; and at a quarter before 
five o'clock on the morning of Monday the 4th of April 1774, 
having then lived five months beyond his forty-fifth year, Oliver 
Goldsmith died. 

When Burke was told, he burst into tears. Reynolds was in 
his painting-room when the messenger went to him : but at once 
he laid his pencil aside, which in times of great family distress he 
had not been known to do ; left his pain ting-room, and did not 
re-enter it that day, ISTorthcote describes the blow as the "severest 
" Sir Joshua ever received. " ]STor was the day less gloomy for 
Johnson. " Poor Goldsmith is gone" was his anticipation of the 
evil tidings. " Of poor dear Doctor Goldsmith," he wrote three 
months later to Bosweli, " there is little more to be told. He 
" died of a fever, I am afraid more violent by uneasiness of 
" mind. His debts began to be heavy, and all his resources were 
" exhausted. Sir Joshua is of opinion that he owed Dot less than 
" two thousand pounds. Was ever poet so trusted before ? " He 
spoke of the loss for years, as with the tenderness of a recent 
grief; and in his little room hung round with portraits of his 
favourite friends, even as Swift had his adorned with the "just 
" half-a-dozen" that he really loved away from Laracor, Goldsmith 
had a place of honour. " So, your wild genius, poor Doctor Gold- 
' smith, is dead," wrote Mrs. Carter to Mrs. Yesey. "He was just 
i going to publish a book called Animated Nature : I believe a 
' compilation of Natural History. He died of a fever, poor 
c man. I am sincerely glad to hear he has no family, so his loss 
' will not be felt in domestic life." The respectable and learned 
old lady could not possibly know in what other undomestic ways 
it might be felt. The stair-case of Brick-court is said to have 
been filled with mourners, the reverse of domestic ; women without 
a home, without domesticity of any kind, with no friend but him 
they had come to weep for ; outcasts of that great, solitary, wicked 
city, to whom he had never forgotten to be kind and charitable. 
And he had domestic mourners too. His coffin was re-opened at 
the request of Miss Horneck and her sister (such was the regard 
he was known to have for them), that a lock might be cut from 
his hair. It was in Mrs. Gwyn's possession when she died, after 
nearly seventy years. 

A public funeral was at first proposed ; and Lords Shelburne 
and Louth, Reynolds, Burke, Beauclerc, and Garrickwere to have 
borne the pall ; but it was afterwards felt that a private ceremony 
would better become the circumstances in which he had died. 



chap, xx.] ILLNESS AND DEATH. 463 

Everything he possessed, with such small fragments of property 
as he had left at the Edgeware cottage, was of course in due time 
sold by public auction, including his "large, valuable, and well- 
" chosen library of curious and scarce books," his "household 
" furniture and other effects : " but Bott, Griffin, and others, still 
remained with unsatisfied claims ; and his brother Maurice, who 
had come over to London in the month preceding the sale for 
the purpose of "administering" to what had been left, soon saw 
how hopeless it was to expect that his brother's debts would not 
absorb everything, and, even before the sale took place therefore, 
went back empty-handed as he came. For the funeral, Burke and 
Reynolds directed all arrangements ; Hawes saw them carried into 
effect (as he afterwards managed the sale of the books and furni- 
ture, of which he reserved, and his grandson the under-secretary 
at war still retains, one small and valued relic, the poet's writing 
desk) ; and the fifth day after his death was appointed for the 
ceremony. Reynolds's nephew, Palmer (afterwards Dean of Cashel), 
attended as chief mourner : and was accompanied by Mr. Day, 
afterwards Sir John Day, and judge advocate-general at Bengal ; 
by his relative and namesake heretofore mentioned, Robert Day, 
who became the Irish judge ; and by Mr. Hawes, and his friend 
Mr. Etherington. These were unexpectedly joined on the morning 
of the funeral by Hugh Kelly, x who in the presence of that great 
sorrow had only remembered happier and more friendly days, and 
was seen still standing weeping at the grave as the others moved 
away. So, at five o'clock on the evening of Saturday the 9th 
of April, the remains of Oliver Goldsmith were committed to their 
final resting-place in the burial' ground of the Temple Church. 
No memorial indicates the grave to the pilgrim or the stranger, 
nor is it possible any longer to identify the spot which received 
all that was mortal of this delightful writer. 

The notion of a monument in Westminster Abbey was the 
suggestion of Reynolds ; and he selected the spot over the south 
door in poet's corner, where it was subsequently placed in the area 
of a pointed arch, between the monuments of Gay and the Duke 
of Argyll. It consisted of a medallion portrait and tablet. 
Nbllekens was the sculptor ; and, two years after Goldsmith's 
death, the inscription was written by Johnson. " I send you the 
" poor dear Doctor's epitaph," he writes to Reynolds, with grief 
apparently as fresh as though their loss had been of yesterday. 
" Read it first yourself; and if you then think it right, show it 
" to the club." The principal members of the club, with other 
friends, dined soon after at Reynolds's : and so many objections 
were started on its being read, that it was resolved to submit them 
to Johnson in the form of a round robin, such as sailors adopt at 



464 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

sea when a matter of grievance is started, and no one wishes to 
stand first or last in remonstrance with the captain. 

After stating the great pleasure with which the intended epitaph 
had been read, and the admiration it had created for its elegant 
composition and masterly style " considered abstractedly," this 
round robin, which was dictated by Burke, went on to say that its 
circumscribers were yet of opinion that the character of Goldsmith 
as a writer, particularly as a poet, was not perhaps delineated with 
all the exactness which Doctor Johnson was capable of giving it ; 
and that therefore, with deference to his superior judgment, they 
humbly requested he would at least take the trouble of revising it, 
and of making such alterations and additions as he should think 
proper upon a farther perusal. This part of the remonstrance 
Johnson received with good humour ; and desired Sir Joshua, who 
presented it, to tell the gentlemen he would alter the epitaph in any 
manner they pleased, as to the sense of it. But then came the pinch 
of the matter. Langton, who was present when the remonstrance 
was drawn up, had not objected to it thus far ; but to what now 
was added, he refused to give his name. " But if we might venture 
to express our wishes, they would lead us to request that he would 
write the epitaph in English rather than in Latin, as we think that 
the memory of so eminent an English writer ought to be perpetuated 
in the language to which his works are likely to be so lasting an 
ornament, which we also know to have been the opinion of the 
late Doctor himself." Langton was too "sturdy" a classic to assent 
to this ; his scholarly sympathies having already invited and 
received, from Johnson, even a Greek lament for their common 
loss. The names circumscribed were those of Burke, Francklin 
(the translator of Sophocles and Lucian, who miswrote his own 
name in signing it), Chamier, Colman, Yachell (a friend of Sir 
Joshua's), Reynolds, Forbes (the Scotch baronet and biographer 
of Beattie), Barnard, Sheridan, Metcalfe (another great friend of 
Sir Joshua's, and a humane as well as active member of the House 
of Commons), Gibbon, and Joseph Warton. "I wonder," ex- 
claimed Johnson, when he read this part of the remonstrance, and 
the names, "that Joe Warton, a scholar by profession, should 
" be such a fool. I should have thought Mund Burke, too, 
"would have had more sense." His formal answer was not less 
emphatic. He requested Reynolds at once to acquaint his fellow 
mutineers, that he would never consent to disgrace the walls of 
Westminster Abbey with an English inscription. The Latin was 
accordingly placed upon the marble, where it now remains. I 
append a translation as nearly literal, line for Hue, as I could 
make it, consistent with an attempt to preserve the spirit as well 
as manner of the orisrinal. 



chap, xx.] ILLNESS AND DEATH. 465 

OiiivAKii Goldsmith 

Poetse, Physici, Historici, 

qui nullum fere scribendi genus 

non tetigit, 

nullum quod tetigit non ornavit : 

sive risus essent movendi, 

sive lacrymse, 

affectuum potens, at lenis dominator ; 

ingenio sublimis, vividus, versatilis ; 

oratione grandis, nitidus, venustus : 

hoc monumento memoriam coluit 

Sodalium amor, 

Amicorum fides, 

Lectorum veneratio. 

Natus Hibernia, Forneise Lonfordiensis 

in loco cui nomen Pallas, 

Nov. xxix. MDCCXXXI. 

Eblanse Uteris institutus, 

Objit Londini 

Apr. iv. mdcclxxiv. 



Op Oliver Goldsmith — 

Poet, Naturalist, Historian, 

who left scarcely any kind of writing 

untouched, 

and touched nothing that be did not adorn : 

Whether smiles were to be stirred 

or tears, 

commanding our emotions, yet a gentle master : 

In genius lofty, lively, versatile, 

in style weighty, clear, engaging — 

The memory in this monument is cherished 

by the love of Companions, 

the faithfulness of Friends, 

the reverence of Readers. 

He was born in Ireland, 

at a place called Pallas. 

(in the parish) of Forney, (and county) of Longford, 

on the 29th Nov. 1731. 

Trained in letters at Dublin. 

Died in London, 

4th April, 1774. . 

Sixty-one years after this monument was placed in the Abbey, it 
occurred to the Benchers of the Inn to which I have the honour to 
belong in the Temple, to contribute to the place such additional 
interest as it might receive from commemorating Goldsmith's con- 
nection with it. A simple and handsome inscribed slab of plain 
solid white marble was accordingly, in 1837, fixed in the church, 
which, when the subsequent repairs and restorations compelled its 
removal, was transferred to the recesses of the vestry-chamber, 
where it now remains interred. 



466 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book iv. 

THIS TABLET 

RECORDING THAT 

OLIVEE GOLDSMITH 

DIED IN THE TEMPLE 

ON THE 4TH OP APRIL, 1774, 

AND "WAS BURIED 

IN THE ADJOINING CHURCHYARD, 

VTAS ERECTED BY THE BENCHERS OP 

THE HONOURABLE SOCIETY OP THE INNER TEMPLE, 

A.D. 1837. 

SIR FREDERICK POLLOCK, 

TREASURER. 

I availed myself of the friendship of the distinguished person 
whose name is affixed to this tablet, at that time Treasurer of the 
Inner Temple, and since Lord Chief Baron, who offered to accom- 
pany me in a visit made in 1853 to the burial-ground of the 
Temple, in the hope of identifying the grave ; but we did not 
succeed in the object of our search. We examined unavailingly 
every spot beneath which interment had taken place, and every 
stone and sculpture on the ground ; nor was it possible to discover" 
any clue in the register of burials which we afterwards looked 
through with the Master of the Temple. It simply records as 
" Buried 9th April, Oliver Goldsmith, M.B. late of Brick-court, 
"Middle Temple." 



CHAPTER XXI. 



THE REWARDS OF GENIUS. 1774. 

While Goldsmith lay upon his death-bed, there was much dis- 
cussion in London about the rights of authors. After two 
Mi 46 decisions i* 1 ^he courts of common law, which declared an 
author's property to be perpetual in any work he might 
have written, the question had been brought upon appeal before 
the House of Lords, where the opinions of the judges were taken. 
This was that dignified audience in whose ears might still be ring- 
ing some echo of the memorable words addressed to them by Lord 
Chesterfield. " Wit, my Lords, is a sort of property — the pro- 
" perty of those who have it, and too often the only property they 
" have to depend on. It is, indeed, but a precarious dependance. 
11 We, my Lords, thank God, have a dependance of another kind." 
Safe in that dependance of another kind, what was their judgment, 



chap, xxi.] THE REWARDS OF GENIUS. 467 

then, as to the only property which not the least distinguished of 
their fellow citizens had entirely and exclusively to count upon for 
subsistence and support. 

First for the opinions of the judges. Five declared their belief 
that, by the common law of England, the sole right of multiplying 
copies of any work was vested for ever in him, by the exercise of 
whose genius, faculties, or industry, such work had been produced ; 
and that no enactment had yet been passed, of force to limit that 
estate in fee. The special verdict in the case of Millar v. Taylor 
had found it as a fact, " that before the reign of Queen Anne it 
" was usual to purchase from authors the perpetual copyright of 
" their books, and to assign the same from hand to hand for 
• " valuable considerations, and to make them the subject of family 
" settlements ;" and, in the subsequent elaborate judgment, Lord 
Mansfield, Mr. Justice Willes, and Mr. Justice Aston concurred 
in holding that copyright was still perpetual by the common law, and 
not limited, except as to penalties, by the statute. Six other judges, 
on the contrary, held that this perpetual property which undoubtedly 
existed at common law, had been reduced to a short term by an act 
passed in the reign of Queen Anne, somewhat strangely entitled (if 
this were indeed its right construction) as for the encouragement of 
literature. Chief Justice Mansfield's opinion would have equalised 
these opposing judgments in the House of Peers ; but, though 
retaining it still as strongly as when it had decided the right in 
his own court, the highest tribunal of common law, he thought it 
becoming not then to repeat it. Lord Camden upon this moved 
and carried a reversal of Lord Mansfield's decision, by reversing 
the decree which had been founded upon it. The House of Lords 
thus declared the statute of Anne to have been a confiscation to 
the public use, after a certain brief term, of such rights of property 
in the fruits of his own labour and genius, as, up to the period of 
its enactment, an author had undoubtedly possessed. 

Lord Camden glorified this result for the sake of literature itself. 
For he held that Genius was not intended for the benefit of the 
individual who possessed it, but for the universal benefit of the 
race ; and, believing Fame to be its sufficient reward, thought 
that all who deserved so divine a recompense, spurning delights 
and living laborious days, should scorn and reject every other. 
The real price which Genius sets upon its labours, he fervently 
exclaimed, is Immortality ; and posterity pays that. On the other 
hand, Mr. Justice Willes announced an opinion hardly less earnest 
in its tone, to the effect that he held it to be wise in every state 
to encourage men of letters, without precise regard to what the 
measure of their powers might be ; and that the easiest and most 
equal way of doing it, was by securing to t -ty of 



468 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book vi. 

their own works. By that means, nobody contributed who was 
not willing ; and though a good book might be run down, and a 
bad one cried up, for a time, yet sooner or later the reward would 
be fairly proportioned to the merit of the work. ' ' A writer's 
" fame," added this learned and upright judge, " will not be the 
" less, that he has bread ; without being under the necessity, that 
" he may get bread, of prostituting his pen to flattery or to party." 
Such interest as society showed in the discussion, went wholly 
with the majestic sentiments of Camden. " The very thought, " 
wrote Lord Chatham to Lord Shelburne, " of coining literature 
' * into ready rhino ! Why, it is as illiberal as it is illegal. " So 
runs the circle of injustice. Attempt to get social station by your 
talents, and you are illiberal ; use your talents without social 
station to commend them, and you are despised. It is neverthe- 
less probable that the reader who may have accompanied me 
through this narrative thus far, will think it not "illiberal" to 
put these rival and opposing doctrines to the practical test of the 
Life and Death it has recorded. To that, in the individual case, 
they may now be left ; with such illustrative comment from the 
nature and the claims of Goldsmith's writings, and the peculiarities 
of his character, as already I have amply supplied. 

Let this be added. The debt which Lord Camden proclaimed 
due to genius (though, from his conduct on the only occasion 
when they met, he probably did not think it due to Goldsmith), 
has to this date been amply paid in the fame of the Vicar of 
Wakefield, the Citizen of the World, the Deserted Village, She 
Stoops to Conquer, and the Traveller. Goldsmith died in the 
prime of his age and his powers, because his strength had been 
overtasked and his mind was ill at ease ; but, by this, the world's 
enjoyment of what he left has been in no respect weakened or 
impaired. Nor was his lot upon the whole an unhappy one, for 
him or for us. Nature is vindicated in the sorrows of her favourite 
children ; for a thousand enduring and elevating pleasures survive, 
to redeem their temporary sufferings. The acquisition of wealth, 
the attainment of tranquillity and worldly ease, so eagerly coveted 
and unscrupulously toiled for, are not themselves achieved without 
attendant losses ; and not without much to soften the harshness 
of anxiety and poverty, to show what gains may be saved out of 
the greatest apparent disadvantage, and to render us all some solid 
assistance out of even his thriftless, imprudent, insolvent circum- 
stances, had Goldsmith lived and died. He worthily did the work 
that was in him to do ; proved himself in his garret a gentleman 
of nature ; left the world no ungenerous bequest ; and went his 
unknown way. Nor have posterity been backward to acknowledge 
the debt which his contemporaries left them to discharge ; and it 



chap, xxi.] THE REWARDS OF GENIUS. 469 

is with calm, unruffled, joyful aspect on the one hand, and with 
grateful, loving, eager admiration on the other, that the creditor 
and his debtors at length stand face to face. 

All this is to the world's honour as well as gain ; which has yet to 
consider, notwithstanding, with a view to its own larger profit in 
both, if its debt to the man of genius might not earlier be dis- 
charged, and if the thorns which only become invisible beneath 
the laurel that overgrows his grave, should not rather, while he 
lives, be plucked away. But it is not -an act of parliament that 
can determine this ; even though it were an act to restore to the 
man of letters the rights of which the legislature has thought fit 
to deprive him. The world must exercise those higher privileges 
which legislation follows and obeys, before the proper remedy can 
be found for literary wrongs. Mere wealth would not have sup- 
plied it in Goldsmith's day, and does not supply it in our own. 

This book has been written to little purpose, if the intention 
can be attributed to it of claiming for the literary man either more 
money than is proportioned to the work he does by the apprecia- 
tion it commands, or immunity from those conditions of prudence, 
industry, and a knowledge of the multiplication table, which are 
inseparable from success in all other walks of life. But, with a 
design far other than that, one object of it has been to show that 
the very character of the writer's calling, by the thoughts which he 
creates, by the emotions he is able to inspire, by the happiness he 
may extend to distant generations, so far places him on a different 
level from the tradesman, merchant, lawyer, or physician, who has 
his wares and merchandise or advice to sell, that whereas in the 
latter case the service is as definite as the reward due to it, in the 
former a balance must be always left, which only time can adjust 
fairly. In the vast majority of cases, too, even the attempt at 
adjustment is not made until the tuneful tongue is silent, and the 
ear deaf to praise ; nor, much as the extension of the public of 
readers has done to diminish the probabilities of a writer's suffering, 
are the chances of his lot bettered even yet, in regard to that fair 
and full reward. Another object of this book has therefore been 1 
to point out, that literature ought long ago to have received from 
the state an amount of recognition, which would at least have 
placed its highest cultivators on a level with other and not worthier 
recipients of its gratitude. The lapse of time, in widening and enlarg- 
ing the dominion of intellect, has not lessened this grave necessity. 
The mind of the nation now more than ever claims to be recognised 
for itself. More than ever it is felt as a national opprobrium that 
such of our countrymen as have heretofore achieved greatness, 
whether in literature or in science, should have struggled into 
fame without the aid of English institutions, by waging continuous 



470 OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [book it. 

war against disparagement and depression, and in sheer defiance 
of both forcing their reluctant way. Every season has its fashions, 
indeed, in literature and other things ; and, at the service of the 
popular man who cares to attend them, thera will always be great 
men's feasts, and rooms full of gaping admirers, such as, in Gold- 
smith's day, and only a few years before Sterne's own miserable 
death, the creator of Mr. Shandy and my Uncle Toby had the good 
fortune to enjoy. But such cases only more staringly exhibit 
the disproportion that exists between the power which a writer 
exerts in his vocation, and the respect which he ought to be, and 
is not, able to claim for himself. It is not with patronage in that 
sense, or in any sense, that the claim of literature, the equal claim 
of science, the claim of human intellect worthily exercised, to its 
due place among men, has really anything to do. But its relation 
to the state involves higher considerations ; for the best offices of 
service to a state are those in which thinkers are required, and, 
more than many of its lawyers, more than all its soldiers, it is in 
such offices that the higher class of men of letters and science are 
competent to assist. Yet, if any one would measure the weight of 
contempt and neglect that now presses down such service, let him 
co, lare the deeds for which an English Parliament ordinarily 
beb )ws its thanks, its peerages, and its pensions, with the highest 
gr e of honour or reward that it has ever vouchsafed to the 
loftiest genius, the highest distinction in literature, the greatest 
iixoral or mechanical achievement, by which not simply England 
has been benefited and exalted, but the whole human race. 

Other classes of the community, however, besides our rulers and 
governors, have their share in inflicting the wrong, and must have 
i larger share in bringing about the remedy. Society cannot help 
bei- g swayed and mastered in the most important of its interests, 
yet it can steadily refuse to recognise the men who hold and exer- 
cise that power. Partly because of the sordid ills that attended 
authorship in such days as have been described in this volume, 
partly from the fact that it is a calling daily entered by men whom 
neither natural gifts nor laborious acquirements entitle to success 
in it, the belief is still very common that to be an author is to be 
a kind of vagrant, picking up subsistence as he can, a loaf to-day, 
a crumb to-morrow, and that to such a man no special signification 
of respect in social life can possibly be paid. When Lord Mans- 
field proclaimed from the bench that there really existed such a 
thing as an author's right to his copy, his meaning was as little 
understood, as, three quarters of a century later, the author's claim 
to those few more years' enjoyment of the fruits of his own labour 
or genius, which only the other day was humbly solicited and 
painfully recovered out of the confiscation applauded by Lord 



hap. xxi.] THE REWARDS OF GENIUS. 471 



Camden. Nor in marking thus the low account and general dis- 
esteem of their calling, are the literary class themselves to be ex- 
empted from blame. "It were well," said Goldsmith on one 
occasion, with bitter truth, " if none but the dunces of society 
" were combined to render the profession of an author riliculous 
" or unhappy." The profession themselves have yet to leirn the 
secret of co-operation ; they have to put away internal jealousies ; 
they have to claim for themselves, as poor Goldsmith after his 
fashion very loudly did, that defined position from which greater 
respect and more frequent consideration in public life could not 

i long be withheld ; in fine, they have frankly to feel that then- 
vocation, properly regarded, ranks with the worthiest, and that on 
all occasions to do justice to it, and to each other, is the way to 
obtain justice from the world. If writers had been thus true to 
themselves, the subject of Copyright might have been equitably 
settled when attention was first drawn to it ; but while De Foe 
was urging the author's claim, Swift was calling De Foe a fellow 
that had been pilloried, and we have still to discuss as in forma 
pauperis the rights of the English author. 

Confiscation is a hard word, but after the decision given above 
of the highest English court, it is the word which alone describes 
fairly the statute of Anne, ' ' for encouragement of literature. " That 

l is now superseded by another statute, having the same gorgeous 
name, and the same inglorious meaning : for even this last enact- 
ment, sorely resisted as it was, leaves England behind any other 
country in the world, in the amount of their own property secured 
to her authors. In some, to this day, perpetual copyright exists ; 
and though it may be reasonable, as Doctor Johnson argued that 
it was, to surrender a part for greater efficiency of protection to 
the rest, yet the commonest dictates of natural justice might at 
least require that an author's family should not be beggared of 
their inheritance as soon as his own capacity to provide for them 

j may haA'e ceased. In every continental country this is cared for, 

j the lowest term secured by the most niggardly arrangement being 
twenty-five years ; whereas in England it is the munificent number 
of seven. Yet the most laborious works, and often the most j 

j delightful, are for the most part of a kind which the hereafter only 
can repay. The poet, the historian, the scientific investigator, do 
indeed find readers to-day ; but if they have laboured with suc- 
cess, they have produced books whose substantial reward is not 
the large and temporary, but the limited and constant, nature of 
their sale. No consideration of moral right exists, no principle of 
economical science can be stated, which would justify the seizure 
of such books by the public, before they have had the chance of 
remunerating the genius and labour of their producers. 






472 



' OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. 



[book 



v „t „»t, easily commit this wrong, it is no* 
But though parliament ca n easily ^co ^ o o{ 

^ such case the quarter to look to for * ^ 8ide th 

a better state of things tnl th « ~ inJferior e ^ ress ion. Th,l 

*°™ of ^/-^t ng s"now from a higher sensd 
true remedy for literary -m ^ g rf ^ duties i. 

than has at any P e ™ d / e *f^ ^c Jter ; and of the socil 

responsibilities ^f , ^ ^J Effectual discharge should hav3 
eonsideratmnandresp^that^he^ ^ ^ 

undisputed right to claim. the biography of the man < 

wben such time shall ^^^3 harsh struggles an1 
genius shall no longer be a picture ottne exhibited as ii 

Lan necessities to which mans bfe »g» > fem& witi 
shameful contrast to the cahn and ^f ory 
society itself rests the advent of that time. 




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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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